Atmosphere and Climate

At the Institute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK), scientists investigate the physical and chemical processes in the atmosphere as well as their interactions in the entire climate system.

Focus

Troposphere

The Institute IEK-8 explores the chemistry of the troposphere, performs global observations, and simulates atmospheric chemistry and transport processes by numerical models.

Stratosphere

IEK-7 conducts research on the chemistry, dynamics and microphysics of the stratosphere and the tropopause region, and on the role these atmospheric layers play in the climate system.

Simulation

Simulation laboratory for climate research

A considerable proportion of climate research at Jülich takes place at the computer: measured data are evaluated, numerical models developed for equations, and model processes simulated and plotted in graphs. For applications requiring high computing power and sophisticated algorithms, Jülich climate researchers can call on the support of experts from the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC), specifically the Simulation Laboratory (SimLab) Climate Science team.

Helmholtz Research Fields

Topic: The atmosphere in global change

Almost all life on Earth depends on the Earth’s thin protective layer, the atmosphere. The institutes participating in this topic use high-resolution regional climate projections to produce predictions of the state of the atmosphere.

Further information

Instruments take off

In order to obtain data that are as comprehensive and informative as possible, the Jülich climate researchers coordinate or participate in measurement campaigns that take into account the various issues of atmospheric research.

Helmholtz Climate Initiative

scientists from 15 Helmholtz Centres conduct interdisciplinary research on systemic solutions to one of the greatest societal problems of our time: climate change.

effzett - Forschungszentrum Jülich#s Magazine

Cooling needed! - Edition 3-21

“It’s real. It’s us. Experts agree. It’s bad. There’s hope.” In these short sentences, Anthony Leiserowitz from Yale University (USA) summarized what we know about climate change and what needs to be done about it: namely to drastically reduce greenhouse gases.

This is true not only for CO2, but also for a group of substances that is less well known outside the scientific community: short-lived climate-impacting substances. These include aerosols, methane, hydrocarbons and soot. In total, they have warmed the atmosphere by just as much as CO2. The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has dedicated a separate chapter to them for the first time. Jülich researchers led by Prof. Astrid Kiendler-Scharr, the chapter’s lead author, have been working on these substances for a long time. Our cover story shows how closely interrelated the substances are and how data and models help to understand these interrelations as well as to make predictions for tomorrow’s climate.