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The consortium "CoKlimax" is developing tools for utilizing Copernicus data for urban planning Whether heat waves or heavy rain: Cities with their high population and building densities are particularly hard hit by the impacts of climate change.

Hundreds of international researchers are currently analysing observations from the year-long MOSAiC expedition, during which hundreds of environmental parameters were recorded with unprecedented accuracy and frequency over a full annual cycle in the central Arctic Ocean. Three review articles on the MOSAiC programmes for atmosphere, snow and sea ice, and ocean have now been published in the journal Elementa, highlighting the importance of looking at all components of the climate system together.

The transport of carbon dioxide stored in the Earth's lithospheric mantle beneath the Hyblean Plateau in southern Italy at a depth of approximately 50 to 150 kilometres is responsible for the exceptionally large CO2 emission of Mount Etna. That is the result of research conducted by an international team of geologists, including researchers from the Universities of Florence (Italy) and Cologne , and from the Istituto di Geologia Ambientale e Geoingegneria of the Italian National Research Council (CNR).

The Matterhorn appears as an immovable, massive mountain that has towered over the landscape near Zermatt for thousands of years. A study now shows that this impression is wrong. An international research team has proven that the Matterhorn is instead constantly in motion, swaying gently back and forth about once every two seconds.

Seismic data collected in Elysium Planitia, the second largest volcanic region on Mars, suggest the presence of a shallow sedimentary layer sandwiched between lava flows beneath the planet's surface. These findings were gained in the framework of NASA's InSight mission (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport), in which several international research partners, including the University of Cologne, collaborate.

Heidelberg geoscientists test new methods to understand the effects of rupture processes in the Earth's interior Spontaneous mineral growth and dissolution in the rock of the Earth's crust, until now observed only by chance and never described or systematically studied, are the focus of a new research project at Heidelberg University.

The oldest known footprints of pre-humans were found on the Mediterranean island of Crete and are at least six million years old, says an international team of researchers from Germany, Sweden, Greece, Egypt and England, led by Tübingen scientists Uwe Kirscher and Madelaine Böhme of the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen.

Studies of the asteroid Vesta provide new findings on the formation of Earth-like planets The largest asteroid in our Solar System - Vesta - was exposed to an extensive series of impacts by large rocky bodies much earlier than previously assumed. Researchers of an international collaboration, including earth scientists of Heidelberg University and Freie Universität Berlin, reached this conclusion based on analyses of Vesta meteorites, numerical simulations, and observations carried out with the space probe Dawn in 2011 and 2012.

Study with participation from Heidelberg shows that supervolcanoes remain dangerous long after erupting Besides cosmic impacts, supervolcanic eruptions rank among the worst catastrophes in the Earth's history, like that of the Toba volcano on Sumatra (Indonesia) approximately 75,000 years ago, which affected all of Southeast Asia and beyond.

Although Dr. Christian Maas does his research only on the computer, it's sometimes as if he were standing in a laboratory. "I do experiments," he says. By means of his virtual experiments, geophysicist Maas is investigating a question that couldn't be answered in any lab in the world: the question of the how the Earth came into being.

Artifacts found in the Einhornhöhle cave in northern Germany are the subject of a research project involving experts from Freie Universität Berlin and shine a light on the cognitive abilities of our Neanderthal ancestors No 150/2021 from Aug 04, 2021 A discovery made by a research team in a cave in Lower Saxony, northern Germany, suggests that Neanderthals were not merely a primitive subspecies of archaic humans - a commonplace belief ever since their first fossil remains were found in the nineteenth century.

Tracking future forest fires with AI As temperatures rise, the risk of devastating forest fires is increasing. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) are using artificial intelligence to estimate the long-term impact that an increased number of forest fires will have on forest ecosystems.

The Tübingen region has recently seen hailstorms that brought back memories of the devastating storm of 2013. At that time, billions of dollars in damage were caused, and the damage from the most recent storms is still being assessed. Despite all the trouble hailstones cause, they also possess a previously unknown inner beauty.

From a human perspective, earthquakes are natural disasters - in the past hundred years, they have caused more than 200,000 deaths and enormous economic damage. Mega-earthquakes with a magnitude of nine or higher on the Richter scale are considered a particular threat. Yet the inconceivable energy released in these events doesn't seem to affect the uplift of mountains, according to a new study by geoscientists at the University of Tübingen.

Heidelberg University geographers combine historical images and maps with current data The glaciers of Nanga Parbat - one of the highest mountains in the world - have been shrinking slightly but continually since the 1930s. This loss in surface area is evidenced by a long-term study conducted by researchers from the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University.

Climate reconstruction of the last 200,000 years from East Africa illustrates the living conditions of Homo sapiens when they migrated out of Africa / Homo sapiens was mobile across regions during wet phases and retreated to high altitudes during dry phases An international research team led by Professor Dr Frank Schäbitz has published a climate reconstruction of the last 200,000 years for Ethiopia.

Research team elucidates complex spectrum of trace compounds in the first artificial pigment of mankind Art technologist Dr. Petra Dariz and analytical chemist Dr. Thomas Schmid (School of Analytical Sciences Adlershof SALSA at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung BAM) identified Egyptian blue on a monochrome blue mural fragment, which was excavated in the church of St. Peter above Gratsch (South Tyrol, Northern Italy) in the 1970s.

Researchers from the Universities of Göttingen, Cologne and Århus calculate the water temperatures of the first oceans For decades, there has been controversy about the water temperatures of the first oceans on Earth. At that time, radiation from the Sun was much weaker and the oceans could have been very cold, perhaps even frozen.

Although sun radiation was relatively low, the temperature on the young Earth was warm. An international team of geoscientists has found important clues that high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were responsible for these high temperatures. It only got cooler with the beginning of plate tectonics, as the CO2 was gradually captured and stored on the emerging continents.

Model for the Earth's core: Heidelberg researchers verify presence of solar noble gases in metal of an iron meteorite High-precision noble gas analyses indicate that solar wind particles from our primordial Sun were encased in the Earth's core over 4.5 billion years ago. Researchers from the Institute of Earth Sciences at Heidelberg University have concluded that the particles made their way into the overlying rock mantle over millions of years.