The European Geosciences Union yearly meeting, the EGU General Assembly, is a massive conference. This year, 16 273 scientists participated, amongst them 2 587 researchers from Germany. Thanks to GSGS, I got to be part of this number. During the five days in Vienna, 5 531 oral, 9 432 poster, and 1 287 PICO presentations were held. Like the numbers suggest, the experience was somewhat overwhelming. So many talks, so many parallel sessions, so much non-scientific program, where should one start? Luckily there was a session just for me. Monday morning I started with the short course How to navigate the EGU: tips and tricks. It turned out that the online program tools are most useful. My tips: search for interesting topics and scientists to find relevant sessions and make your own program. Also, it helps to know how to read a map, because the venue is immense.
The amount of scientific content in Arctic research and cloud processes was ample. For this conference, the most beneficial for me was the chance to meet and discuss with known researchers in the field of Arctic mixed-phase clouds, and to hear about their latest work. I also found out about many scientists and institutes working on related topics that I was not aware of before. My own presentation was in the session Clouds, moisture, and precipitation in the polar regions: Sources, processes and impacts. The questions on my talk sparked further discussion that continued to the coffee break. I consider that a success! The largest drawback of the session, and perhaps the entire conference, was that the session were I presented was parallel to a session on atmospheric ice that I was therefore not able to attend.
In addition to learning about the latest results in my own field of research, I enjoyed the possibility to learn about topics within atmospheric science but out of the scope of my daily work. For example, I attended one session that focused on satellite observations of pollutants in the troposphere, and even though I could not follow most of the chemistry I got an impression of their methods and research interests. Furthermore, the EGU includes a substantial amount of non-scientific or semi-scientific program. From those that I attended the highlight was the Rhyme Your Research-short course, where we spent an hour reading and writing poems about our research.
Rosa Gierens
PhD student
PhD project: "Micro-physical processes in Arctic mixed phase clouds”
Institute for Geophysics and Meteorology
Low-level clouds in a complex Arctic environment (Oral presentation in Session AS4.9) Abstract available at https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2019/EGU2019-16069.pdf