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• CANCELED! 03/03/2026 - Tomáš PUCIK: "Forecasting and climatology of large hail in Europe"

  Tomáš PUCIK (European Severe Storms Laboratory)

  Hail is the costliest thunderstorm-related phenomenon. A single storm moving over a large metropolitan area can cause damage worth billions of Euros. In this talk, we take a journey through hail-related topics. We start with which factors make hail more or less damaging and continue with how the hail grows in the storms and which factors are needed to grow hailstones that exceed 5 cm in diameter. Then we continue with state-of-the-art hail forecasting, nowcasting using radar and satellite, and we cover climatology of large hail across Europe and world-wide. We end up what research avenues are there to pursue concerning the hail. And of course, we look at some interesting cases of destructive hailstorms from Europe.
• 10/03/2026 - Zachary MCGRAW: "Advancing Precipitation Change Science: From Crude Models Towards Process-Aware Prediction"

  Zachary MCGRAW (University of Vienna)

  Knowing how precipitation responds to climate change remains one of the most important challenges in climate science. Yet current understanding relies on crude analytic models, while comprehensive climate models are often treated as black boxes and disagreements across simulations as beyond explanation. Although rainfall is controlled by cloud and convective processes, no practical framework has linked their sensitivities to precipitation change. Instead, rainfall changes are commonly described as “energetically constrained,” reflecting balance with atmospheric radiative processes – a necessary outcome rather than a predictive framework. Here I present initial steps toward a process-aware understanding of precipitation change. First, intermodel disagreement in the precipitation response to warming is shown to relate to how cloud radiative effects respond to warming (cloud feedbacks), echoing their known prominence for uncertainty in climate sensitivity. 
  Second, I lay out the processes through which stratospheric aerosols – from volcanic eruptions or solar geoengineering – reduce precipitation, integrating cloud and convective processes into the explanation of why this occurs and why simulations disagree on the strength of this effect. 
  Together, these results can guide efforts to better understand and predict how precipitation changes over long timescales.
• 17/03/2026 - Pavle ARSENOVIC: "Solar Storms and Earth’s Shield: What Happens When the Magnetic Field Weakens?"

  

  Pavle ARSENOVIC (BOKU)

  Located about 15 to 35 km above the surface, it acts as a natural shield that prevents dangerous levels of UV radiation from reaching the ground. The ozone layer can be depleted by Solar Particle Events (SPEs), which are short-lived bursts of high-energy particles which can enter the Earth’s atmosphere and disrupt its chemistry. Currently, the Earth’s geomagnetic field deflects most of these particles, limiting their impact to the polar regions. However, geological records demonstrate periods throughout Earth’s history where the geomagnetic field was significantly weaker.

  During those periods, ionizing particles can enter Earth’s atmosphere at lower latitudes and damage the ozone layer, resulting in increases in surface UV radiation. We provide the first detailed simulations of the impacts of extreme SPEs, and we show that under current geomagnetic field conditions there would be major impacts on atmospheric ozone levels and surface UV radiation levels, posing risks to human health. However, we also demonstrate that in previous periods when the geomagnetic field weakened, the effects of solar storms would pose major risks to human health, and the stability of multiple climatic- and ecosystems. This study confirms the vulnerability of our environment to space weather, emphasizing the need to prepare for future events.

  Link to my personal Boku page: https://boku.ac.at/en/personen/person/EEF312023E768AED

  Link to the paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2321770121

  Link to the Conversation article (for non-scientific audience): https://theconversation.com/new-study-shows-mysterious-solar-particle-blasts-can-devastate-the-ozone-layer-bathing-earth-in-radiation-for-years-233464
• 14/04/2026 - Daniela BRITO MELO: "Monitoring European Emissions of Fluorinated Gases"

  

  Daniela BRITO MELO (EMPA)

  The continuous quantification of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is essential to assess progress towards net-zero emissions, as well as the efficacy of mitigation strategies. Although fluorinated gases (F-gases) account for only ~2% of European GHG emissions, they are targeted by several international treaties and national regulations due to their high global warming potential. In this talk, I will present the work conducted within the Horizon Europe project PARIS to estimate F-gas emissions in Europe using multiple inverse modelling techniques.

  Links:
  Laboratory for Air Pollution and Environmental Technology: Empa - Air Pollution / Environmental Technology - Overview
  PARIS Horizon Europe project: | About PARIS
• 21/04/2026 - Julia DANZER: "Enhancing the potential of radio occultation data for global climate wind field monitoring"

  Julia DANZER (Wegener Center)

  This seminar starts out with a short introduction on the satellite-based radio occultation (RO) method. By probing the Earth’s atmosphere with a GNSS radio signal, the RO method allows to derive atmospheric profiles for weather and climate applications. Standard atmospheric information from RO data are profiles of pressure, density, temperature, and geopotential height, spanning the free troposphere to the stratosphere (FTS). This talk introduces a pioneering application of RO data for global wind field monitoring and analysis. These new climatic winds are derived from monthly mean RO geopotential fields and share RO’s unique key properties of long-term stability and high vertical resolution in the FTS. The novel approach goes beyond traditional geostrophic, gradient, and equatorial balance approximations by incorporating advection and curvature terms. The derived RO climatic wind fields have been systematically evaluated against the ERA5 reanalysis winds. Results show that the RO climatic winds offer great potential for more accurately representing monthly wind variations, reducing biases, and capturing key atmospheric features compared to traditional wind approximations. As an application example, I illustrate the potential of these RO climatic winds to accurately capture features of the tropical width. In conclusion, the RO climatic wind record is a valuable new resource for the scientific community, supporting climate monitoring and analysis and enhancing our understanding of atmospheric dynamics - particularly in the stratosphere, where observational data are still limited.

   

   

   
• 28/04/2026 - Andrew WILLIAMS: "A robust constraint on the response of convective mass fluxes to warming"

  Andrew WILLIAMS (Scripps)

  A fundamental quantity in tropical dynamics is the `convective mass flux', which measures the rate at which mass is transported upwards, per unit area, in convective updrafts. Convective mass flux encodes information about the frequency and intensity of thunderstorms, and has been linked to the strength of the large-scale tropical circulation. Changes in convective mass flux under warming are thus an important, but uncertain, aspect of climate change. Here I will use idealized radiative-convective equilibrium simulations to investigate how convection responds to warming, critique a previous explanation by Held & Soden (2006), and introduce a new theory for understanding changes in convective mass flux with warming.
• 11/05/2026 - Chunxue YANG: "Ocean reanalyses and their use in support of climate and ocean dynamics", Changed date, time and location!

  Chunxue YANG (CNR-ISMAR, Roma, Italy)

  Ocean reanalyses reconstruct historical ocean states by combining ocean circulation models with observational data through data assimilation algorithms. Their key advantage lies in providing temporally and spatially complete ocean coverage, enabling the study of ocean dynamical processes — such as large-scale circulation, heat transport, and long-term climate trends — that would otherwise be inaccessible due to observational limitations.
  At CNR-ISMAR, we have been developing long-period ocean reanalyses extending back to the 1960s and 1870s, complementing reconstructions produced by other international centers. A distinctive aspect of our approach is the use of large ensembles, which allow us to systematically quantify uncertainties in our ocean estimates.
  During this presentation, we will outline our ocean reanalysis development activities and showcase how these reconstructions are being used to advance our understanding of ocean dynamics.

  Attention: Changed date, time and location!
  Date: Monday, May 11th, 2026
  Time: 17:00-18:00
  Location: HS 1, Josef Holaubek-Platz 2, UZA 2, 1090 Wien
• 19/05/2026 - Christian ZANGERL: "Deep-seated rock slides and infrastructure"

  Christian ZANGERL (BOKU Vienna)

  Abstract will follow.
• 26/05/2026 - Gabriele LIBARDI: "Power markets and the role that meteorology plays in them"

  Gabriele LIBARDI (Marbl)

  Abstract will follow.
• 02/06/2026 - Hamish PRINCE: "TBA"

  Hamisch PRINCE (University of Vienna)

  Abstract will follow.

   

   
• 16/06/2026 - Emma HOLMBERG: "tba"

  Emma HOLMBERG (University of Bern)

  Abstract will follow.
• 23/06/2026 - Clarissa KROLL: "TBA"

  Clarissa KROLL (ETHZ)

  Abstract will follow.
• 30/06/2026 - Clemens BIERMAIR-MAD: "GeoSphere warning system"

  Clemens BIERMAIR-MAD (GeoSphere)

  Abstract will follow.