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Over the weekend, a team around Dr. Killian Brennan, Postdoc in Cloud Dynamics, supported the Command Center of the SUI-2 gas ballooning pilots at the Gordon Bennett 2026 race.

Working day and night in close collaboration with our ETH partners Brennan’s team provided strategic support, meteorological analysis and trajectory evaluations to support the balloonists in navigating an ultimately rewarding outlier route over the Baltic Sea. All the other teams navigated further east through the Suwalki Gap.

For us Atmospheric Dynamicists, Gordon Bennett was an exciting opportunity to put our tools and Lagrangian thinking to work in a demanding real-world setting. Brennan and his colleagues from the ETH Atmospheric Dynamics Group could test the new tool “NETwork optimizer for BAllooning Trajectories, NETBAT”, a balloon flight path optimisation software developed by Brennan and evaluated based on previous Gordon Bennett races by Nina Fieldhouse during her internship at GIUB. The software uses open IFS ensemble data from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). In addition, outstanding meteorological support was given by NETBAT Forecasters Franco Lee (ETH), Martin Aregger (Uni Bern), Quentin Nicolas (ETH).

This year’s Gordon Bennett adventure was also a great reminder that achievements like this are only possible through close teamwork, bringing together different personalities, expertise, perspectives, and resources.

Huge congratulations to the courageous SUI-2 pilots Balthasar Wicki and René Erni, their Command Center and chasing crew for making this exciting and beautiful adventure possible.

Curious about the SUI-2 flight track and the race? Have a look at the map:

Bern is suffering from the heat wave. Temperatures exceeded 40 °C for the first time in Bern’s urban climate monitoring network (Linkedin Nils Tinner), and the temperature of the Aare broke the all-time record as early as June (Link to the article in the 'Berner Zeitung'). In line with this, Duncan Pappert and Olivia Romppainen explain the circulation patterns that lead to prolonged heat waves (Link to the article in the 'Environmental Research').
 

Where does Switzerland stand in addressing climate change? The latest report from the Swiss Academies of Sciences (SCNAT), in collaboration with the Institute of Geography, provides an answer to this question.

The Remote Sensing Research Group has developed the longest global snow cover data set (1979 – 2023) in the frame of the European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative SNOW project.

The gap-filled dataset facilitates most detailed analysis of global snow dynamics to date and is available for the public free of charge (details and links are published in the Journal Remote Sensing of Environment).
On Monday March 2^nd, ESA has published a press release (see link) to highlight the unique development and global snow time series. If you need further information, you are welcome to ask Stefan Wunderle. 
 

The NCCR CLIM+ Programme on 'Climate Extremes & Society' (www.nccr-climplus.ch) has been approved for funding by the Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF for the coming 4 years. With 47 PIs, 10 project partners, 20 partner institutions and 22 stakeholder organisations from health to finance and agriculture, NCCR-CLIM+ will unite expertise from both the natural and social sciences to support Switzerland’s effective transformation towards a more resilient and safer future (Co-lead by the University of Bern / Karin Ingold, Olivia Romppainen-Martius and ETH Zurich). 
 

Heike Mayer has been elected to the SRI board for a three-year term. With the Sustainability Research Initiative, SCNAT, together with its sister institutions, promotes research on sustainable development and 2030 Agenda. It focuses on the joint handling of social issues of higher priority in overarching consortia.