Impressions/Review

The presentations from the Pre-Conference Day can be found here.

The talks and posters from the scientific conference programme can be found here.

For the 18th time, the scientific "who's who" of Austrian climate research gathered at the Austrian Climate Day; this time from Monday, 22 to Wednesday, 24 May 2017 at the University of Vienna. More than 100 talks on current research findings on the most pressing topic of the coming decades formed the core of the Climate Day.

The focus of this year's Pre-Day was on networking within the climate research community (early-career researchers with senior scientists) as well as with practitioners and multipliers in this field. In order to put together the most diverse, interdisciplinary project teams possible, collaboration between universities and research institutions with stakeholders from practice is essential — and so over 70 participants came together for a lively exchange at the "marketplace".

The following two days were traditionally dedicated to a wealth of talks on the most current and interesting projects from the Austrian climate (impact) research community. The individual focus areas spanned such diverse fields as socio-ecological change, governance and energy policy, as well as the accounting of greenhouse gas emissions and the costs of climate change.

Awards were also presented again this year — in the poster competition, Susanna Tscharner (Strengthening risk awareness and personal preparedness among people with a migration background in Austria) took first place ahead of her BOKU colleague Christoph Schürz. The CCCA Early Career Award was shared between two recipients due to the high quality of both submissions — Sabine Rumpf (Climate warming and elevational range limits: rear edges shift faster than leading edges) and Dominik Thom (The impact of future forest dynamics on climate: Interactive effects of changing vegetation and disturbance regimes) could both claim victory.

A special lifetime achievement honour was bestowed upon Dr Ingeborg Auer, who was awarded the Julius Hann Medal by the ÖGM. The Julius von Hann Medal in Gold is awarded to individuals who have rendered outstanding services to the science of meteorology and/or climatology. Dr Ingeborg Auer is one such individual. The board of the Climate Change Centre Austria extends its warmest congratulations to her on this honour.

The significance of the research findings presented at the Climate Day for society is also reflected in the extensive coverage by various media outlets — we'd like to share a brief overview of the articles that appeared during or around the Climate Day:

• Climate change manifests itself locally (03 June 2017, derStandard)
• In the heat of the climate battle (01 June 2017, der Standard)
• Farmers also see opportunities from climate change (26 May 2017, APA)
• 7,000-year-old drill core set to shed light on flood risk (24 May 2017, Tiroler Tageszeitung)
• Drill core from Lake Mondsee provides data spanning 7,000 years (23 May 2017, der Standard)
• Austrian Climate Day: researchers call for climate protection (23 May 2017, APA)
• Climate change is a great opportunity (22 May 2017, Kurier)
• Mondsee drill core set to shed light on flood risk (steiermark.orf.at)