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The growing concerns about the Earth’s climate system and the increasing importance of saving raw materials are critical challenges that supply chain members mostly face, leading companies to susta...

Climate change is a “super wicked” problem. Policy regulation and research suggest that a systemic approach is needed and that education is a key element of the necessary multi-disciplinary, transformative, and holistic solutions. Higher education institutions can play a crucial role in facilitating mitigation and adaptation by enabling and empowering young generations to act. This article presents the work of Montanuniversität Leoben Resources Innovation Center (MUL RIC) in climate education actions, within the framework of EIT Climate-KIC. It gives insights from the largest summer school regarding climate system innovation in the EU—“The Journey”, which has been co-organized by MUL RIC since 2018. In this contribution, The Journey is shown as an example of a systemic approach applied to higher education as a driver of climate solutions. It also discusses how it relates to EU policy and to recommendations of higher education for climate change.

In the course of the annual air temperature in Wrocław (TWr variable) a rapid change of the thermal regime was found between 1987 and 1989. A similar temperature change has occurred in Central Europe. TWr increased by more than 1 deg a strong, statistically significant positive trend emerged. The analysis of processes showed that strong warming in the cold season of the year (December–March) occurred as a result of an increase in the NAO intensity and warming in the warm season as a result of increased sunshine duration. Multiple regression analysis has showed that the winter NAO Hurrell’s index explains 15% of TWr variance, and the sunshine duration of the ‘long day’ (April–August) period 49%, whereas radiative forcing 5.9%. This indicates that the factors incidental to the internal variability of the climate system explain 64% of the TWr variability and the effect of increased CO 2 concentration only ~6%. The reason for this rapid change of the thermal regime was a radical change in macro-circulation conditions in the Atlantic-European circular sector, which took place between 1988 and 1989. It has similarly changed the structure of the Central European weathers. The heat, which is the cause of warming in Wrocław, comes from an increase in solar energy inflow (April–August) and also is transported to Europe from the North Atlantic surface by atmospheric circulation (NAO). These results indicate that the role of CO 2 in shaping the contemporary temperature increase is overestimated, whereas internal variability of the climate system is underestimated.

Weather prediction is essential to the daily life of human beings. Current numerical weather prediction models such as the Global Forecast System (GFS) are still subject to substantial forecast biases and rarely consider the impact of atmospheric aerosol, despite the consensus that aerosol is one of the most important sources of uncertainty in the climate system. Here we demonstrate that atmospheric aerosol is one of the important drivers biasing daily temperature prediction. By comparing observations and the GFS prediction, we find that the monthly-averaged bias in the 24-h temperature forecast varies between ± 1.5 °C in regions influenced by atmospheric aerosol. The biases depend on the properties of aerosol, the underlying land surface, and aerosol–cloud interactions over oceans. It is also revealed that forecast errors are rapidly magnified over time in regions featuring high aerosol loadings. Our study provides direct “observational” evidence of aerosol’s impacts on daily weather forecast, and bridges the gaps between the weather forecast and climate science regarding the understanding of the impact of atmospheric aerosol.

Arctic sea ice and its snow cover are important components of the cryosphere and the climate system. A series of in situ snow measurements were conducted during the seventh Chinese Arctic expeditio...

The glacier mass balance is an important variable to describe the climate system and is used for various applications like water resource management or runoff modelling. The direct or glaciological method and the geodetic method are the standard methods to quantify glacier mass changes, and both methods are an integral part of international glacier monitoring strategies. In 2011, we established two glacier mass-balance programmes on Yala and Rikha Samba glaciers in the Nepal Himalaya. Here we present the methods and data of the directly measured annual mass balances for the first six mass-balance years for both glaciers from 2011/2012 to 2016/2017. For Yala Glacier we additionally present the directly measured seasonal mass balance from 2011 to 2017, as well as the mass balance from 2000 to 2012 obtained with the geodetic method. In addition, we analysed glacier length changes for both glaciers. The directly measured average annual mass-balance rates of Yala and Rikha Samba glaciers are −0.80 ± 0.28 and −0.39 ± 0.32 m w.e. a−1, respectively, from 2011 to 2017. The geodetically measured annual mass-balance rate of Yala Glacier based on digital elevation models from 2000 and 2012 is −0.74 ± 0.53 m w.e. The cumulative mass loss for the period 2011 to 2017 for Yala and Rikha Samba glaciers is −4.80 ± 0.69 and −2.34 ± 0.79 m w.e., respectively. The mass loss on Yala Glacier from 2000 to 2012 is −8.92 ± 6.33 m w.e. The winter balance of Yala Glacier is positive, and the summer balance is negative in every investigated year. The summer balance determines the annual balance. Compared to regional mean geodetic mass-balance rates in the Nepalese Himalaya, the mean mass-balance rate of Rikha Samba Glacier is in a similar range, and the mean mass-balance rate of Yala Glacier is more negative because of the small and low-lying accumulation area. During the study period, a change of Yala Glacier's surface topography has been observed with glacier thinning and downwasting. The retreat rates of Rikha Samba Glacier are higher than for Yala Glacier. From 1989 to 2013, Rikha Samba Glacier retreated 431 m (−18.0 m a−1), and from 1974 to 2016 Yala Glacier retreated 346 m (−8.2 m a−1). The data of the annual and seasonal mass balances, point mass balance, geodetic mass balance, and length changes are accessible from the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS, 2021), https://doi.org/10.5904/wgms-fog-2021-05.

Climate change due to increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is one of the most pressing issues facing society on a global scale. The growth of GHG emissions between 2000 and 2010 was higher than in each of the previous three decades, and each of the past four decades has been successively warmer than any preceding decades since 1850. Continued GHG emissions will cause further warming and changes in the climate system. Climate change affects livestock production in multiple ways, both directly and indirectly. Many of the impacts on the livestock sector result from increasing frequency and magnitude of weather and climate extremes such as droughts, flash floods, untimely rains, frost, hail and severe storms. This article describes some of the most vulnerable disaster communities in Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe and South America. It then describes the importance of meteorological information provided by national Meteorological and Hydrological Services to help Veterinary Services support sustainable management of livestock in vulnerable pastoral communities.

A globalis klimavaltozas sulyos fenyegetest jelent a Fold lakoi szamara. A foldi eghajlatra tett emberi hatasok csokkentese szuksegszerű, hogy minimalizaljuk a szelsőseges időjarasiesemenyek karos kovetkezmenyeit. Ennek megfelelően surgős feladat a globalis, a regionalis es a nemzeti szintű intezkedesek kidolgozasa. Az ENSZ Eghajlatvaltozasi Kormanykozi Testulete (IPCC) megerősiti azt a tenyt, hogy emberi tevekenyseg all a globalis atlaghőmerseklet-emelkedes hattereben. A jelentes ismerteti, hogy a novekvő UHG kibocsatas valtozasokat okoz az oceanokban, hat a sarki jegsapkakra, illetve a bioszfera es az eghajlati rendszer mas elemeire is. A globalis klimavaltozast minden eszkozzel mersekelni kell. Munkam soran vizsgalom legszennyező anyag kibocsatast Magyarorszagon. Bemutatom a főbb indikatorok valtozasainak trendjet. Global climate change poses a serious threat to the inhabitants of the Earth. Reducing human impacts on the Earth’s climate is necessary to minimize the adverse consequences of extreme weather events. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to develop action plans at global, regional and national levels. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirms the fact that human activity is behind the rise in global average temperatures. The report explains that increasing GHG emissions cause changes in the oceans, affect polar ice caps as well as the biosphere and other elements of the climate system. Global climate change must be mitigated by all means. In the course of my work I study air pollutant emissions in Hungary and present the trends of changes in the main indicators.

Palaeorecords suggest that the climate system has tipping points, where small changes in forcing cause substantial and irreversible alteration to Earth system components called tipping elements. As atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise as a result of fossil fuel burning, human activity could also trigger tipping, and the impacts would be difficult to adapt to. Previous studies report low global warming thresholds above pre-industrial conditions for key tipping elements such as ice-sheet melt. If so, high contemporary rates of warming imply that exceeding these thresholds is almost inevitable, which is widely assumed to mean that we are now committed to suffering these tipping events. Here we show that this assumption may be flawed, especially for slow-onset tipping elements (such as the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) in our rapidly changing climate. Recently developed theory indicates that a threshold may be temporarily exceeded without prompting a change of system state, if the overshoot time is short compared to the effective timescale of the tipping element. To demonstrate this, we consider transparently simple models of tipping elements with prescribed thresholds, driven by global warming trajectories that peak before returning to stabilize at a global warming level of 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level. These results highlight the importance of accounting for timescales when assessing risks associated with overshooting tipping point thresholds. Ongoing global warming is likely to cause tipping point thresholds to be passed, but an abrupt system change can still be avoided if the warming is reversed quickly relative to the timescale of the tipping element.

A volcanic source of variationThe Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), a 50- to 70-year quasiperiodic variation of climate centered in the North Atlantic region, was long thought to be an internal oscillation of the climate system. Mannet al.now show that this variation is forced externally by episodes of high-amplitude explosive volcanism. They used an ensemble of climate models to evaluate the causes of the AMO, finding that volcanos are the most important influence, and that there is no evidence to show that it has been internally generated during the last millennium.Science, this issue p.1014

RESUMEN: Los sistemas complejos aparecen en un amplio abanico de disciplinas y están compuestos por muchos elementos que interactúan y en los que surgen fenómenos colectivos que no pueden deducirse de las propiedades de sus elementos constitutivos. Durante las últimas décadas, los principales métodos y herramientas para estudiar y caracterizar los sistemas complejos se han desarrollado en el ámbito de las redes complejas en física estadística. Paralelamente, las redes probabilísticas se han desarrollado como métodos genéricos de modelización y predicción en el ámbito de la ciencia de datos. Esta tesis explora las sinergias metodológicas entre las redes complejas y las redes probabilísticas, centrándose en el desarrollo de enfoques adecuados para modelar y predecir el comportamiento de sistemas complejos a partir de datos. Se centra en dos sistemas seleccionados: un sistema de regulación génica y el sistema climático de la Tierra. ABSTRACT: Complex systems appear in a wide range of disciplines, they are composed of many interacting elements in which collective phenomena emerge that cannot be inferred from the properties of their constituent elements. During the last decades, the main methods and tools to study and characterise complex systems have been developed in the area of complex networks in statistical physics. In parallel, probabilistic networks have been developed as generic modelling and prediction data science methods. This thesis explores the methodological synergies between complex networks and probabilistic networks, focusing on the development of suitable approaches to model and predict the behaviour of complex systems from data. The focus is on two selected systems: A gene regulatory system and Earth’s climate system.