Cologne Geosciences Colloquium in winter semester 2017/2018

Climate Change – Geoscientific Perspectives

ClimCommColn  - a recently formed group of early career scientists, mainly from Cologne Geosciences say:

“Climate change and its consequences are not only important for our daily lives, but are also part of ongoing research among many disciplines in our department. In addition, the „United Nations Framework Convention in Climate Change, 23rd Conference of the Parties” (UNFCCC COP23) will be held in Bonn this November. This event will attract further attention to the topic “climate change” in our society, especially in the Cologne-Bonn region.

This offers a great opportunity for our department both to have a colloquium series on this interdisciplinary topic, and to communicate our field of research to an audience outside our department and even outside academia. Therefore, the talks would be prepared for a non-specialist audience and would include the current state of research on climate change related topics within the disciplines and would outline the consequences of the findings on our lives.”

Rosa Gierens, Nils Küchler and Stephanie Reilly of ClimCommColn (and GSGS members) will help the scientific coordinator of the series, Prof Roel Neggers (Meteorology), put together a varied and exciting programme. If you want to join or know more about their initiative, contact them by email (see link above). Karin Boessenkool will support the organisers on the logistical side.

The proposed outline of the colloquium series is illustrated in the sketch at the top.

• The COP23 meeting serves as motivation for the series. Aligned with the purpose of COP23, i.e. creating political agreement for the public good on the bases of scientific facts, the first presentation would start with a broad overview talk showing where and how our society is affected by climate change.

• The following lectures would contain climate change contributions from a wide range of disciplines in Geosciences to reflect the breadth of our department.

• Since the COP23 will take place in the middle of the semester, the aim is to have a concluding talk at the end of the series that picks up the decisions that were taken or not taken at the COP23. Therefore, a speaker who has her/his expertise in or is connected to policy making could make a nice closure.

To propose a speaker:
Send an email to Karin Boessenkool (kboessen (at) uni-koeln.de) by the end of May. It would be good if you know that the person in question can talk well in front of an interested but non-specialist audience on a topic related to (human induced) climate change. Please include the following information:
1)    Your name and institute;
2)    Name, affiliation and contact details of the proposed speaker;
3)    Topic you think this person could talk about;
4)    If possible, link to a website or other information source for the proposed speaker
5)    If you had previous contact with the proposed speaker, and if you would be willing to contact them.

If you wish to do so, and know the person in question personally, you can informally test their interest or availability, but please do not invite anyone before you get the go-ahead from the organisers.

The available dates are listed here.