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

14 December 2019

Mangroves caught in the middle

Mangroves caught in the middle

In a channel at TU Delft’s Water lab a stream of purple-tinted water makes its way past thousands of small wooden pegs. The water was dyed by PhD-candidate Son Truong Hong, who is closely observing the flow with an empty bottle of paint in his hands. This test forms part of his research into the importance of the mangrove forests in the Mekong Delta estuaries. Son is fascinated by the tangled roots of these extraordinary trees. What is the mangrove’s role in preventing river bank erosion? And, most crucially, how much of the mangrove forests needs to remain to support a healthy ecosystem?

10 December 2019

Greenland ice losses rising faster than expected

Greenland ice losses rising faster than expected

Greenland is losing ice seven times faster than in the 1990s and is tracking the IPCC’s high-end climate warming scenario, according to the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE) Team.

10 December 2019

Weather alarm: chance of sudden death

Weather alarm: chance of sudden death

Rain radar, weather apps, satellite images and code yellow (weather warning code in NL): we are all fascinated by the weather. Nevertheless, even the experts know less about it all than we think, particularly when it comes to the weather at night and in cold areas. Bas van de Wiel wants to change that. He intends to use his ERC Consolidator Grant to give the underappreciated nights a bigger role in weather and climate models.

08 December 2019

Continuously scanning the coast

Continuously scanning the coast

Hotel Atlantic in Kijkduin overlooks the North Sea. On its deserted roof a state of the art laser scanner is monitoring the beach every hour, 24/7. Sander Vos hopes the resulting data will provide insight into the restoration of the coast after a storm when part of the beach and fore dunes disappear into the sea. With the information provided by the scanner he and his TU Delft colleagues hope to become ‘coastal weathermen’ who will be able to predict exactly how the beach behaves after a storm.

06 December 2019

Observing rain at street-level

Observing rain at street-level

Heavy showers sweep over cities, flooding streets and houses when urban drainage systems get overwhelmed. Ever-increasing pressures from climate change, population growth and changes in land use augment the risks of urban floods. We’re currently unable to predict accurately where and when flooding will occur. Forecasting is particularly tricky in densely populated cities, where rainfall observations are scarce, spatial variability in land-cover is high and flood response to rainfall is very fast. Researchers want to use radar and innovative ground sensors to observe rainfall and water levels more accurately and at higher density to improve the reliability of hydrological predictions . Marie-Claire ten Veldhuis is trying to gather this information in various projects. Her objective is to unravel the complexity of urban hydrological response, to be able to predict with greater accuracy when and where streets will flood.


Climate Action Stories

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Climate Action News

25 March 2024

Isabell Bagemihl wins the Best Energy Paper 2023

Isabell Bagemihl wins the Best Energy Paper 2023

"Techno-economic Assessment of CO2 Electrolysis: How Interdependencies between Model Variables Propagate Across Different Modelling Scales"

25 March 2024

Sophie de Roda Husman wins Best Climate Action Paper 2023

Sophie de Roda Husman wins Best Climate Action Paper 2023

"A high-resolution record of surface melt on Antarctic ice shelves using multi-source remote sensing data and deep learning"

05 March 2024

Taking the pulse of Earth’s ecosystems

Taking the pulse of Earth’s ecosystems

Susan Steele-Dunne has been awarded a NWO Vici grant. She will explore how to monitor the pulse of the Earth’s ecosystems using radar observations. Variations in radar observations from a forest during a day can reveal early warning signs of declining health conditions of a forest. An improved understanding of these processes will allow us to make better predictions of how ecosystems will respond to respond to climate change. In the long term, it may even offer opportunities for early interventions.

05 March 2024

GreenTU awards the Sustainability Label at TU Delft

GreenTU awards the Sustainability Label at TU Delft

22 February 2024

Getting to the bottom of sustainable water storage

Getting to the bottom of sustainable water storage

Nature-based solutions have become increasingly popular when it comes to finding ways to discharge or store water. How these behave in time is largely unknown, however. Two trial setups at Flood Proof Holland, to be studied over at least ten years, will give hydrologist Thom Bogaard and his team of students and other researchers a better understanding of the long-term effects of nature-based solutions. The outdoor setups will also provide plenty of opportunities for “multidisciplinary cross-pollination”.