News and Events

New 3-dimensional climate reconstructions allow studying the variability of the Atlantic-European jet stream back to the 15th century. A study of the climatology group shows that hydroclimatic extremes were often related to excursion in the jet and that recent changes in the jet are within the variability seen over the past 600 years.

This year's prize for the best master's thesis in geosciences goes to Daniela Friebel for her work on thermal sensation in two districts of the city of Bern. It mapped places of well-being and discomfort during summer heat phases from the perspective of the neighbourhood residents. The resulting maps allow unusual insights into the perception of urban space.

After an eventful year 2024, the Climatology Group wishes you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Photo: KEYSTONE/Peter Klaunzer can be found at https://www.journal21.ch/bild-des-tages/bern-im-fruehen-winterkleid

Nils Tinner, master's student and assistant of the climatology group, was mentioned in an article of the university newspaper "uniFokus", due to his development of the 'Bernometer' app.

You can find the article under the following Link on page 40.

Charles Pierce joined the Urban Climate sub-group of the Climatology group on November 1^st as a PhD student. He is working on heat indices for characterizing health impacts due to heatwaves on continental and city scales. Charles studied mechanical engineering at EPFL and ETH and worked in the private sector until turning his attention to Climate Science. He started the MSc in Climate Science in Bern, where his interest in long-term research led him to transition into a PhD program.

Martin Wegmann, "Data Steward" at the University of Bern, supports researchers in data management and emphasizes that this is also a contribution to society. Since taxpayers finance research, he sees science as having a responsibility to give back knowledge. According to the UN, free access to scientific data is central to combating global problems such as climate change. Wegmann cites old temperature measurement series as an example, which classify today's heat waves historically. The University of Bern makes its data publicly available for at least ten years. A central concern remains the management of large amounts of data and the trade-off between scope and openness.

Martin Wegmann (and member of the climatology group) in an interview about open data and research data management. Click here for the article.

1740 was the coldest year in Central Europe of (at least) the past 600 years. A daily weather reconstruction shows the worst-case sequence of weather systems leading to this extreme.

Chinwe Speranza and Thomas Breu in an interview with uni AKTUELL.

Lorenz Hilfiker joined the Climatology group on September 1st as a research assistant. His work at GIUB focuses on the methodical conception and technical implementation of data assimilation for the monthly reconstruction of the climate of the past 600 years (ModE-RA). Lorenz studied physics and mathematics in Bern, Berlin and Durham, and he holds a PhD in mathematics from the University of Hamburg. Driven by his interdisciplinary curiosity, he has recently completed a second master’s degree in statistics and data science at University of Bern.

We announce an open PhD position in climate and weather extremes in the Central Andes and their effect on agriculture. Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the project aims at providing information for building a decision support system for agriculture in the Central Andes. 

For more information, click here.

The Urban Climate Group's measurement networks are expanding. Noémie Wellinger gave an interview to Livia Bieri of the Thuner Tagblatt.

Today, Lucas Pfister successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Exploring Approaches of "Quantitative Historical Weather Reconstruction over Europe". Congratulations, Lucas! Thanks for the past eight years in our research group as a student, MSc and PhD candidate.

Wine must quality makes for excellent growing-season temperature reconstructions back to the 15th century. The paper by Christian Pfister and co-authors, highlighted in "Nature" and "Science" shows that recent wine must quality in the past 20 years exceeds any period in the past.

How hot is it in your street? Where is it coolest right now? Current measurements and maps, 5-day forecasts, warnings, health tips and more can be found in the Bernometer (bernometer.ch).

App download for Android and Apple

More information about the project

Carlota Corbella started as a PhD student in the Climatology Group on the 1st of June 2024. Her research focuses on the relationship between internal climate variability and extreme weather events through the assimilation of daily historical data into climate models. She obtained a bachelor's degree in Physics from Princeton University and a master's degree in Environmental Sciences from ETH-Zürich. In her master's thesis, Carlota studied the representation of surface solar radiation in CMIP6 ensemble members to study the competing effects of global warming, aerosols, and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

Conall Ruth started as a PhD student in the Climatology group on 1st May 2024. His research will focus on reconstructing European weather and climate back to the 17th century using early instrumental and documentary records. This will involve a range of statistical and machine learning approaches, and should provide insight into historical weather and climate variability and extremes. Previously, Conall worked in the Irish meteorological service in the areas of climate monitoring and weather forecasting, and he has additional research experience in hydro-meteorology and renewable energy management.

Patrick Bigler started working as a junior assistant in the climatology group on the 1^st of February 2024. He will focus on the digitization of meteorological data from the 18th century but will also perform other tasks as a junior assistant to support the team. At the same time, he will be working on his master's thesis on the question of how katabatic winds cool the city of Biel during the summer and operating the temperature measurement network in the city of Biel. He is looking forward to working at GIUB, meeting new people from different backgrounds, and immersing himself in the world of science.

At Humboldt's desk in Oranienburger Strasse in Berlin, modern climate research was born. This is where Humboldt wrote his manuscripts, but countless letters, tables and drawings also passed over this desk. On the basis of selected sheets from Humboldt's estate, Dominik Erdmann and Stefan Brönnimann shed light on how our current image of the climate came into being in the book "Humboldts Wetterwekstatt" (see also the interview in the NZZ).

The heat of the last few days also had an effect on the night - between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. Celsius were still measured over 30 degrees Celsius in the city center.

(Twitter post of the University of Bern)

With global warming, floods could become stronger in the future. But in the past, flood-rich phases were often cold and not warm phases. How does that go together? A study by the institute shows that different mechanisms were at work. In the past, atmospheric circulation dominated flooding: the supply of cold, moist air. For about 40 years, warming has become more important: With the same circulation, warm air can contain more moisture, which leads to more intense precipitation. On the basis of data sets dating back 200 years, the two influences can now be separated for the first time.

Link to the article: https://www.bernerzeitung.ch/wie-die-erderwaermung-starkregen-beguenstigt-546634651947

How do hail, thunderstorms or even nice weather develop? Why are there such different weather conditions? And how does the weather differ from the climate? In the four episodes of this SRF School production, Olivia Romppainen (episode 1) explains the origin of the weather and Stefan Brönnimann (episode 4) explains the causes and consequences of urban heat.

Documentary climate data describes evidence of past climate stored in predominantly written historical documents like diaries, chronicles, newspapers, etc. These records offer unprecedented, high-resolution insights into past variations in temperature, precipitation, and wind as they cover seasons (e.g., cold season) and regions (e.g., East Asia) where we don't have much information from traditional data sources like tree rings. Termed DOCU-CLIM, this dataset comprises more than 600 time series from around the world, including many previously unpublished ones. The strong, significant correlations between the documentary observations and climate fields suggest that documentary records hold considerable potential for large-scale climate reconstruction and could contribute substantially to advancing our understanding of past climate variability. The paper by Angela-Maria Burgdorf and Stefan Brönnimann and coauthors was recently published in "Scientific Data": https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-023-02303-y

Film by Stefan Brönnimann, 30 min., https://youtu.be/QR6h2KBHfOI

Fritz Nussbaum worked as a teacher almost his entire life, but for 35 years he was head of Physical Geography on a part-time basis and led the Department of Geography through the crisis period of the 1930s and 1940s. He left his mark in Ice Age research, a rocky ridge in the Antarctic, with his voice against National Socialist geographers and in his home community of Zollikofen. The film, which was made as part of the 150th anniversary of the Bern Geographical Society, is the first part of a three-part series on the history of Bern's geography.

Setareh Amini started as a PhD student in the Climatology Group on the 1^st of May 2023. Her research focuses on generating maps of temperature indicators for various European cities and statistically investigating the impact of urban green areas on mitigating the urban heat island (UHI) effect. She obtained her master's degree in Agricultural Engineering-Water Resources from the International Imam Khomeini University in Iran. Her master's thesis focused on evaluating ensemble precipitation forecasts in various climate regions of Iran.

Moritz Burger

Bern experiences the hottest summer since 2003, with a new all-time record of 24.12 degrees on 4 August. The Bärnerbär goes on a tour of Bern with urban climate expert Moritz Burger to look for the warmest places. Hotspots in the truest sense of the word are Bubenbergplatz and Gerechtigkeitsgasse. It is cooler in Oberbottigen and, of course, on the Aare.