Climate sensitivity and Earth’s current warming
Institutskolloquium
- Datum: 06.03.2026
- Uhrzeit: 10:30 - 12:00
- Vortragender: Dr. Hauke Schmidt
- Hauke Schmidt is a climate scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) in Hamburg, where he leads the Global Circulation and Climate Group. He also serves as a Deputy Director within the institute's "Atmosphere in the Earth System" department. Hauke's work revolves around using numerical models to understand how the atmosphere and climate system respond to different forces. Currently, he is focused on Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS), which measures how much the Earth's surface temperature will rise if atmospheric CO2 concentrations double. He aims to use high-resolution models to narrow down the current scientific uncertainty regarding this value. His research group uses a variety of tools, ranging from simple 1D models to the sophisticated ICON-Sapphire global storm-resolving model. Beyond CO2, Hauke has extensive experience studying how solar variability, volcanic eruptions, and climate engineering schemes impact the Earth. Hauke holds a PhD from the University of Cologne, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1999. Before joining MPI-M in 2002, he worked at the Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique in Paris and later spent time as a scientific visitor at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Colorado.
- Ort: IPP
- Raum: Günter-Grieger Lecture Hall (Greifswald) and Zoom
- Gastgeber: Dmitry Moseev
- Kontakt: dmitry.moseev@ipp.mpg.de
At least since the late 19th century, scientists have asked the question how much Earth would warm for a given increase of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, or in other words: How large is Earth’s climate sensitivity? Despite an increasing scientific and societal interest in this question since the late 20th century, estimates remain surprisingly uncertain. In this presentation I’ll address a number of questions related to climate sensitivity and the observed warming of our planet, among them: What exactly do we mean when we talk about climate sensitivity? What are the reason for the remaining large uncertainty? How do scientists try to reduce it? Are the recent global temperature records of the years 2023 and 2024 an indication for an accelerated global warming and a reason to discard the lower end of climate sensitivity estimates?