These collaborative workshops bring together Climate Scientists, Mathematicians and Ecologists to answer key questions around the relationships between the variability and sensitivity of the Earth System and its subcomponents.

The first workshop will discuss proposed emergent constraints on future projections, many of which are based-on assumed relationships between sensitivity and variability.

The European Commission has announced the organisation of a Climate Science2Policy workshop (CS2P workshop) to bring together Horizon 2020 projects related to climate science and policy makers. The main goal is to identify and discuss key policy-relevant messages and research requirements to achieve the climate targets of the European Green Deal, as well as other climate change related policies and programmes.

From December 2019 and into 2020, fires burned in Australia like never before. Extreme heat and drought led to an unprecedented fire season in the forests of the southeast of the country, razing some 18 million hectares of land and affecting more than three billion animals.

The carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration in the atmosphere is affected by both natural processes and anthropogenic emissions. Distinguishing the short-term variations in CO₂ levels due to natural processes from human emissions is important for calculating the carbon budget and pushing for action to mitigate the effects of climate change. 

Here, we explore the four main drivers of the changes in the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere in the order of their contributions to weekly and monthly variations (from greatest to smallest).

The ocean absorbs around a quarter of atmospheric CO₂ released by anthropogenic sources. While this uptake mitigates global warming, it also disrupts the seawater chemistry. The additional CO₂ in the ocean reduces its pH and the amount of calcium carbonate minerals, an effect known as ocean acidification. This reduction in calcium carbonate minerals negatively affects the growth and survival rates of calcifying marine organisms, such as corals and shellfish, which depend on these minerals to build their skeletons and shells. 

Confinement measures have been adopted by many nations around the world since the beginning of 2020 in an attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19. With a great part of the world’s population forced to stay at home, these measures have brought about drastic changes in energy demand, transport and consumption patterns.

A workshop on the Sixth Assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR6) and the potential involvement of the 4C project in the report was held on June 12th, 2019 in Brussels, on the second day of the 4C kick-off meeting. The 3-day meeting opened with a summary of the four key objectives of the project, listed below, and the timeline, expectations and budget information were discussed.

1. Understanding the contemporary carbon cycle.

2. Predicting the carbon cycle and climate for the global stocktake to the horizon of 2030.

The 4C project, funded under the EU Horizon 2020-Research and Innovation program, sets to address the uncertainties in our understanding of the carbon-climate interactions and feedback. 4C will address the crucial knowledge gap in the climate sensitivity to CO₂ emissions through innovative integration of models and observations. It will provide new constraints on modelled carbon-climate interactions and climate projections, and support the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments and policy objectives.