Climate change

Our atmosphere is warming at a fast pace, in response to changes in the atmospheric composition from combustion of fossil fuels (oil, coal). Our department develops and applies advanced observational, conceptual and modelling tools to detect, quantify, understand and predict climate change and its effects, such as sea level change, ice sheet and glacier change, precipitation and hydrological change, etc.

Some of the tools we use for climate change research are remote sensing, atmospheric models of diverse scales (e.g., the large eddy simulation model DALES), and earth system models like CESM.

We develop observational techniques and data analysis procedures to diagnose the health of our climate, understand its dynamics, and provide information to numerical models.

We develop and test numerical models that are used for climate projections and climate dynamics research, for instance, regarding the representation of clouds and convection, atmospheric boundary layer processes, precipitation, ice sheet and glaciers, etc. 

Multiple indicators of climate change, from AR5 report of the IPCC, Summary for Policy Makers