Climate Action

There is no doubt that the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are changing our living environment. Climate change is in our hands. We need to both work on limiting it as much as we can (mitigation), but we will also have to learn to adapt to new circumstances. TU Delft will harness its innovative powers to support the world-wide transition to non-fossil resources, and adaptation of the living environment to the consequences of global warming.

The problem is complex and urgent – but we have no other choice than to be optimistic and use all of our capacity to face the challenge, through our education programs and our research.

For more information, see:

In the Climate Action research programme, we start from four themes we consider to be paramount for future Climate Action:

The TU Delft vision on Climate Action is deeply founded in preceding decades of university wide climate action research. The goal of the Climate action research programme is to build on current strengths and identify the areas where there is a need to strengthen our capacities to keep up our (inter)national reputation as climate action university.

Climate Action News

23 May 2023

Field lab ‘WaterStraat’ on TU Delft Campus celebrates five years of innovation

Field lab ‘WaterStraat’ on TU Delft Campus celebrates five years of innovation

The recent news is abundantly clear: severe weather, yellow code alerts, and water damage in large parts of the country. Due to climate change, we can expect more heat and drought, but also more rainfall in a short period of time.

22 May 2023

TU Delft monitors biodiversity for green TU Delft Campus

TU Delft monitors biodiversity for green TU Delft Campus

Monday, May 22 2023, during Biodiversity Day, TU Delft is launching a collaboration with Waarneming.nl to make the TU Delft Campus more green and vibrant. René Hoonhout and Tim Tabak from EcoCampus gave tours to students and staff to discover and capture plants, animals and organisms on campus. Monitoring the biodiversity is an important part of the sustainability ambition of the TU Delft to be carbon neutral, climate-adaptive and circular by 2030 with a focus on improving biodiversity and quality of life. René Hoonhout: "We are moving towards a nature-inclusive way of management. By making observations, we can measure whether this contributes the improvement of biodiversity."

15 May 2023

Seed fund grants for 9 TU Delft climate scientists

Seed fund grants for 9 TU Delft climate scientists

For the first half year of 2023, the TU Delft Climate Action Programme has granted 9 applications for the Seed Fund. The researchers come from the faculties CEG, TPM and 3ME.

10 May 2023

Extreme Weather Phenomena: PHARA's 3D Radar Aims to Better Understand Them

Extreme Weather Phenomena: PHARA's 3D Radar Aims to Better Understand Them

01 May 2023

Royal Honours for Herman Russchenberg

Royal Honours for Herman Russchenberg

Herman Russchenberg, Professor of Geoscience and Remote Sensing at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences (CEG) and TU Delft Pro Vice Rector for Climate Action, was made an Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau in Leiden.


Climate Action News

24 April 2017

Traditional Japanese uchimizu technique works to cool down hot cities

Traditional Japanese uchimizu technique works to cool down hot cities

The simple old Japanese tradition of water sprinkling - uchimizu - is an effective way of reducing extreme heat in cities. This will be TU Delft researcher Anna Solcerova's message at the EGU General Assembly (European Geosciences Union) in Vienna on Monday 24 April.

19 April 2017

Coincidence and Twitter lead to discovery new crack in Greenland’s largest glacier

Coincidence and Twitter lead to discovery new crack in Greenland’s largest glacier

Something caught the eye of Stef Lhermitte last week, while he was looking through satellite images of the Greenland’s Petermann Glacier. Almost by coincidence he saw a new thin line, as he was going through ESA Sentinel-1 images for research on melt. He checked other satellite images, and saw the line, apparently unnoticed until then, first appear on July 2016. In a series of five tweets, Lhermitte shared his discovery, hoping someone might be able to shed some light.

26 January 2017

Charting the Irrawaddy with balloons and GPS trackers

Charting the Irrawaddy with balloons and GPS trackers

This week, a team of TU Delft researchers and students will travel to Myanmar to chart the flow of the country’s largest river, the Irrawaddy. The delegation will be taking 15 specially-made GPS trackers and 400 balloons with LED lights with them to help complete the task. Once the devices have been put to water, the team will track their progress as they travel several hundred kilometres downstream. Using this method, the researchers hope to collect data on the variations in the flow rate of the river. The team will also measure the quality of the water. The data will be used to calibrate a model of the river’s hydraulics and water quality.

19 January 2017

17/02 Symposium Urban Air Quality

17/02 Symposium Urban Air Quality

12 December 2016

Mysterious ‘crater’ on Antarctica indication of vulnerable ice sheet

The East Antarctic ice sheet appears to be more vulnerable than expected, due to a strong wind that brings warm air and blows away the snow. That is the conclusion reached by a team of climate researchers led by Jan Lenaerts (Utrecht University) and Stef Lhermitte (TU Delft), based on a combination of climate models, satellite observations and on-site measurements. Their conclusions will be published in Nature Climate Change on 12 December. “Tens of meters of rising sea levels are locked away in Antarctica”, says Lenaerts. “And our research has shown that also East Antarctica is vulnerable to climate change.”