A recent geoscience education project, undertaken in Irish secondary schools using a children's rights based methodology that incorporated student voice in the design, implementation, and analysis, began with a focus on "Earth Science" but ended, through the influence of the student co-researchers, with a focus on climate literacy. Teenagers have seen the writing on the wall, as sea levels and global temperatures rise, and traditional career paths and global superpowers fall. 

Following on from the aforementioned project, an international comparative study currently ongoing seeks to establish global best practice in geoscience education and climate literacy, with the aim of facilitating improvement in the Irish context. Research suggests Irish school students are eager to learn about the Earth, but are frustrated by classes on climate change that are not actionable and do not address the systemic causes of the climate catastrophe. There is an appetite among teenagers and young people to learn more, but simply adding more classes or more class time isn't sufficient, the classes must be appropriately challenging, honest, and action-focused. This ongoing research seeks to provide guidance and tools to achieve that in Irish formal and informal education. 

Thus, in this presentation, the findings of a recent geoscience and climate change education project will be discussed in the context of how the expressed needs and opinions of the participating students have impacted the ongoing international comparative study seeking to improve Ireland's geoscience and climate literacy.

How to cite: Neenan, E. E.: Rising To The Challenge: Addressing climate literacy in Ireland through the lens of student rights, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12669, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12669, 2021.

The Royal Meteorological Society believes that every student should leave school with the basic climate literacy that would enable them to engage with the messages put forward by the media or politicians, or to make informed decisions about their own opportunities and responsibilities.

Through 2019/ 2020, students, the media and academics became increasingly vocal in demanding that more climate change be taught in UK schools. With a rigid National Curriculum and exam specifications, part of the problem lies in students (and teachers) not realising the relevance of concepts and processes they have actually been taught in school to understanding climate change and the broad spectrum of impacts, mitigation and adaptation issues associated with it. In addition, weather and climate are commonly perceived as being amongst the harder topics in geography and so, even when they are taught at all, geography teachers are used to teaching weather, climate and climate change separately, not highlighting the close ties and links between the topics.

With this in mind, the Royal Meteorological Society has developed a full scheme of work for 11-14 year old students which integrates climate change thinking into weather and climate lessons. Hard copy teacher’s guides have been distributed to schools throughout the UK, free of charge, with associated teaching resources being made available online. Recognising the importance of teacher understanding, the resources are accompanied by CPD materials for teachers.

In 2021, we hope to build on this work by developing resources and teacher training materials for science teachers and students.

How to cite: Knight, S.: Building Climate Change into Weather and Climate Teaching, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-22, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-22, 2021.

The Earth and humanity face real existential threats.  The problems are well known: global warming, climate change (CC), deforestation, pollution, temperature increase, biodiversity loss and so on.

CC is the most dangerous threat of our time.  It “affects every single living being and every ecological niche, with poorer communities suffering disproportionately” (session abstract).  Action and knowledge are needed to combat this crisis so that future generations are saved.

It is important that people learn about CC and its effects, and then learn how to act.  Climate literacy/learning (CL) is the only way in which people can come to understand and become literate so as to make decisions that are grounded in geoethical principles.  As the session abstract says, “the more people are knowledgeable about the changes affecting their lives, the more they will be able to make informed decisions and to adapt and mitigate”.  

Many CL paths exist, all the way down from masters level courses, through collective initiatives, to individual actions.  In our presentation, we will review a variety of CL actions and methods.  These include:

• En-ROADS, a simulation model, developed by Climate Interactive, for negotiating scenarios to limit future global warming. 
• Fridays For Future (FFF), “a global climate strike movement that started in August 2018”.  
• Online participatory simulation to learn about the effect of CC on the oceans, with people from many countries.
• PhD programme on CC impacts on natural coastal risks and adaptation pathways for the Mediterranean coast.
• University courses in environmental science and in ecology.
• Youth Climate Leaders (YCL), an organisation created by four Brazillain women “to offer solutions to help young people tackle [...] the climate crisis and structural unemployment”.  
• Associations, experience volunteering.
• Conferences, participation.
• Designing, playing and debriefing games.
• MOOCs, our experience with several online courses on CC and CL.
• Reading and video documentaries.

We also encourage attendees to share their thoughts and outline their own CL experiences and methods.  We will also attempt to answer questions that the audience may have.

How to cite: Promduangsri, P., Promduangsri, P., Bolouri, F., Caballero Leiva, I. M., Khodja, L., Knecht, E., Matsuoka, F., Parigi, R., and Sharma, L.: A smörgåsbord of climate literacy methods: Outlines & experiences, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3041, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3041, 2021.

The essential role of education in addressing the causes and consequences of anthropogenic climate change is increasingly being recognised at an international level. The Office for Climate Education (OCE) develops educational resources and proposes professional development opportunities to support teachers, worldwide, to mainstream climate change education. Drawing upon the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, the OCE has produced a set of educational resources that cover the scientific and societal dimensions, at local and global levels, while developing students’ reasoning abilities and guiding them to take action (mitigation and/or adaptation) in their schools or communities. These resources include:

1. Ready-to-use teacher handbook that (i) target students from the last years of primary school to the end of lower-secondary school (aged 9 to 15), (ii) include scientific and pedagogical overviews, lesson plans, activities and worksheets, (iii) are interdisciplinary, covering topics in the natural sciences, social sciences, arts and physical education, (iv) promote active pedagogies: inquiry-based science education, role-play, debate, projectbased learning.

2. A Summary for teachers of the IPCC Special Report, presented together with a selection of related activities and exercises that can be implemented in the classroom. 

3. A set of 10 videos where experts speak about a specific issue related to the ocean or the cryosphere, in the context of climate change.

4. A set of 4 multimedia activities offering students the possibility of working interactively in different topics related to climate change.

5. A set of 3 resources for teacher trainers, offering turnkey training protocols on the topics of climate change, ocean and cryosphere.

How to cite: Klein, S., Guilyardi, E., Sadadou, D., Tricoire, M., and Wilgenbus, D.: Resources for teachers on the “Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate”, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13240, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13240, 2021.

The need of dedicated educational curricula in the field of space technologies and their applications was identified as a gap in the official European offer already in 2013 when the Virtual GMES Academy concept was launched with the Salzburg protocol in the framework of EU4Regions project. Since then, the goal to fill this educational gap (no official academic courses are presently offered covering all the aspects of Space Technologies from the mission design up to the applications developments) has been included, as a pillar, in the European Copernicus-uptake strategy, After the start of the European network of Copernicus Academies, the EO4GEO project took the initiative to design the Body of Knowledge (BoK) to be at the base of new specific educational curricula and well identified skills in the field. 
The present status of development of Bok, its relevance even for non-EU and particularly for developing countries, is here discussed and presented. 

How to cite: Tramutoli, V., Capece, N., Colonna, R., Erra, U., Filizzola, C., Lacava, T., Masiello, G., Satriano, V., Scanniello, G., and Serio, C.: On the need of new educational curricula in the field of space technologies and their applications., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16133, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16133, 2021.

Inverse modeling is a commonly used method to infer greenhouse gases (GhGs) sources and sinks based on their observed concentrations in the atmosphere. It is a Bayesian framework and requires a priori fluxes of all the evaluated sources and sinks, atmospheric observations, an atmospheric transport model that relates the observations to the a priori fluxes and the uncertainties of both fluxes and observations. Various techniques exist to solve the inversion.

Atmospheric inverse modeling is and will become even more important in the future quantification of GhGs to monitor the compliance of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. Therefore, the scientific and educational communities are becoming more interested in using atmospheric inversions and this has risen a necessity of creating tools that facilitate understanding as well as training in these techniques.

Quantifying anthropogenic GhG emissions, such as CO₂ from fossil fuel burning or CH₄ from human activities, from atmospheric concentration observations is difficult since the carbon from all sources, both natural and anthropogenic, is mixed in the atmosphere, making it necessary to use other signals or tracers to separate anthropogenic emissions from natural sources. For fossil fuel CO₂ emissions radiocarbon (¹⁴CO₂) is an excellent emission tracer because, due to its radioactive decay (~ 5000 years), it cannot be found in fossil fuels, which have been deposited millions of years ago as organic material. We have developed a Jupyter Notebook based on Python for the quantification of multi-tracer GhGs fossil fuel emissions and its isotopes. The notebook solves for the emissions by applying atmospheric inversions within a practical two-box model. The inverse modeling notebook is based on the analytical maximum a posteriori (MAP) solution of the Bayes’ theorem and allows to assess the error in the state vector and its uncertainty.

This basic but powerful notebook is meant to be an educational and training tool for university students and new researchers in the field as well as for researchers interested in the estimation of long-term (>centennial) time-series of GhG emissions since it is built as a modular algorithm to be easily modified, coupled or expanded to other approaches or models depending on the application. The notebook was initially developed for the inverse modeling of CO₂ and ¹⁴CO₂ simultaneously and it is being expanded for additional GHG such as CH₄ and ¹³CH₄.

How to cite: Gómez-Ortiz, C., Monteil, G., and Scholze, M.: Time-series of GhG emissions estimation for the learning of inverse modeling, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14885, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14885, 2021.

Glacier retreat provides clear, visual evidence of environmental change in response to warming temperatures around the world. In the tropical Andes of Peru, glaciers act as critical buffers to water supply essential to water, food, and energy security downstream, especially during the dry season. The direct and indirect impacts of glacier change are an important part of the global sustainability challenge within the context of both climate change and increased pressures on resources. Public understanding around glacier-fed water supplies, and subsequent threats to this for millions of people due to climate change, is an important component of climate literacy.

In this context, we have developed a web-based interdisciplinary citizen science glacier mapping tool (GlacierMap) to help to raise awareness of these issues, particularly amongst UK high school pupils, and to contribute to increased public support for mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change. Users of GlacierMap undertake an interactive learning experience by mapping a glacier from two different periods (1984 and 2018) from freely available Landsat data, resulting in a visual demonstration of glacier retreat within Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, while learning more about the impacts of this retreat from information provided by the project. 

During the first four months of data collection we integrated pre- and post-mapping questionnaires into the GlacierMap app to evaluate the extent to which participation in mapping impacted understanding of glacier change and concern regarding the associated impacts. We also assessed the value of ‘crowd-sourcing’ glacier mapping for the purposes of glacier monitoring and data generation through comparison of mapping conducted by the general public and that of a control group with previous education and/or work experience in glaciology. In doing so, we have identified a number of challenges and opportunities with regards to the use of a citizen science-based educational activity for climate learning. Challenges relate to recruitment of participants, evaluation, and ethics (particularly when working with children and young people), while opportunities were identified in terms of increasing public awareness, the provision of alternative forms of learning, and global reach.  

How to cite: Clason, C., Rangecroft, S., Kallis, G., Lewin, S., Mullier, T., Blake, W., and Stewart, I.: GlacierMap: a citizen science mapping tool for evaluating glacier change and contributing to climate literacy, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9531, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9531, 2021.

Citizens’ Climate Lobby is an international organization educating citizens and their political representatives on a solution that could on its own reach 80% of the Paris COP21 objectives. The beauty of this solution is that, although Climate Change is complex and thousands of solutions, regulations, fundings are already implemented, it is a unique and simple solution that would be much more effective and could complement existing ones in driving the change we need. However, this solution is new to most citizens and politicians and needs to be explained to citizens’s volunteering for climate action, policy developers and politicians.

The focus on Carbon Pricing is based on the international economic and scientific consensus as the highest priority primary legislation to address climate change. The need to redistribute the revenues in the form of dividend or climate income is driven both by effectiveness and acceptability and has been enhanced by the Yellow Vest experience in France and the Covid 19 impact. 

Between 2014 and 2020 national teams within the EU have educated and lobbied to build political will with national governments in favour of Carbon Pricing as the most effective climate policy. In the last two years CCL began to work at the European level developing strategy to build political will for the essential support from the European Parliament to support and encourage consistent Carbon Pricing both inside the EU and Internationally. 

Starting with mutual respect and appreciation, more than 500 groups in more than 50 countries engage society in its widest sense. “We seek to educate, build partnerships with and gain the support of community leaders and non-governmental organizations, both nationally and locally.” In Europe CCL has active groups lobbying in Germany; France; Sweden; UK; Denmark; Norway; Spain; Poland & Portugal. In the EU Parliament lobby experience is positive across a range of party groups with positive responses. This competency is currently being scaled up to build political will within the European Parliament.

CCL France, CC Europe and CCE  trains individuals to engage in climate communication on a human level, learning about the concerns, beliefs, and values of the people they seek to educate about the benefits of climate action. This training relies on techniques that include developing effective listening skills, motivational interviewing, and practicing conversational scenarios. 

In this presentation, we will explain and study 

- how CCL is building consensus across the political spectrum: from the market based solution promoted to conservatives to the progressive and efficient solution promoted to social democrats, from “carbon fee and dividend” to “climate income”

- the motivational interviewing used with politicians to build long term relationships and drive change.

- the challenges to explain the solution, from citizens not familiar with carbon footprint nor economic externalities, to policy developers at the EU commission dealing with the Emission Trading System, the energy taxation directive or the border carbon adjustment

How to cite: Ruban, S.: Citizens Climate Lobby, educating citizens to advocate for an effective climate solution, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9295, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9295, 2021.

The Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (JASU) is a state-funded extracurricular educational system that develops and implements methods of science education. Climate education is an essential component of educational system at the JASU. Currently, the JASU has more than 250,000 students working in 64 scientific areas. In 2018, the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine received the status of Category 2 Science Education Center under the auspices of UNESCO and joined the network of Copernicus Academies.

          In 2012, a new section, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing of the Earth (RS), was established at the Kyiv branch of the JASU, which is supervised by the GIS and RS Laboratory. Whereas the Fourth Industrial Revolution is characterized by a booming growth of IT and unprecedented environmental problems and climate changes, the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine aims not only to prepare modern students for life in new environment, but also to improve their climate literacy. Therefore, the GIS and RS Laboratory set a goal to teach the students to utilize modern technologies for monitoring environmental conditions of a particular area through analysis of satellite imagery within the framework of the All-Ukrainian Competition, “Ecopohliad” (Ecoview) (hereinafter referred to as the “Competition”).

          Every day we receive arrays of spatial data that are published on the Internet. However, without proper analysis and, most importantly, interpretation, such data are deposits of rough diamonds hiding in rock formations. Knowledge of the sources and ways to analyse satellite imagery enables us to independently verify the information provided by the media or official statistics. In its activities, the Laboratory uses extensively cloud services, EO Browser and Giovanni, which are characterized by intuitive interface and large array of available satellite imagery.

          The Competition was held for the first time in 2019-2020. It was attended by 341 secondary school students. Topics of competition projects chosen by the students were mostly related to the climate change at their places of residence. In particular, Artem Shelestov examined the relationship between the area of greenery in Kyiv city using Sentinel-2 satellite images and average annual air concentration of PM 2.5 based on surveillance sensors data. Bohdan Avramenko examined the traffic load on the air in the city of Starobilsk, compared the data with the information from Sentinel-5P satellite, and developed appropriate recommendations.  Marharyta Korol analysed the scale and consequences of the fire that occurred in September 2019 in the village of Novi Sokoly near the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and the impact of this emergency situation on air pollution.

          These studies were not only of scientific interest, but also of practical importance. In particular, the results of investigations conducted by Competition winners were published in the media.

How to cite: Babiichuk, S., Dovgyi, S., and Kuchma, T.: Using Remote Sensing Technologies to Improve Climate Literacy of Students at the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukrain, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5380, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5380, 2021.

Our societies are violently hit by the implications of climate change. The IPCC keeps on waving red flags to the governments since its creation but few progress has been made, most of the proposed decisions do not rely on scientific facts.

Article 12 of Paris agreement requests that states made necessary efforts to inform and educate people. Teaching scientific data on climate change to K12 is our duty to provide them with the required knowledge and competencies to face challenges of the future.

Our proposal is to tackle climate change awareness and training through a global multilevel approach whose starting point is to measure meteorological parameters within the classroom or the school, then reach the use of digital data on climate projections computed by international laboratories.

1. Using a thermometer in primary schools : an easy tool to establish a scientific approach to weather and stimulate student’s curiosity to go further. The aim is to bring pupils from the empiric observation of the temperature to quantitative measurements of temperature. It can lead to understand that differences between observed temperatures contribute to the definition / recognition of seasons and their changes across time.

2. Weather-station : one of the best multi-purpose devices for lower secondary schools. It is a visible signal for families, pupils, administrations. Describing the variations in time or in space, smoothly bring the pupils from the weather observed to the parameters of local or regional climate; it is a first approach of the difference between errors and uncertainties.

3. Mathematical models and access to laboratory resources : scientific resource to tackle climate change in upper secondary schools. Even if the equations are too complex for a student to manipulate, students will get access to results computed in laboratories. It will lead to giving an insight to global or regional models and to the scenarios which take into account the long term variation of constraints on the models to build climate projections.

Understanding does not mean blind acceptation and the role of science teachers is to provide the students with the necessary skills and knowledge to be able to understand the climate situation and its evolution. In any case social acceptance will be facilitated when citizens understand the facts and reasons that back uncomfortable decisions or actions.

How to cite: Vidal, G., Eyraud, C.-H., Larose, C., and Lejan, É.: Teaching scientific evidences of climate change to K12 : a key to reach social acceptance of mitigation and adaptation strategies, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8097, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8097, 2021.

Climate change is affecting the foods we love and need—just about everything on the menu is changing. Plants, the basis of life, require the right temperatures, water, soil, air, and sunlight. All but sunlight are changing and having subtle and in many cases ominous impacts on our foods and beverages—from spices and herbs to pistachios. The flavors of teas, the protein and mineral content of wheat, vitamins in rice, and yields of many crops are undergoing change. This story needs to be told given the cultural, historical, and personal connections everyone has to food. The communication and outreach approaches taken to enhance climate literacy include a book – Our Changing Menu: Climate Change and the Foods we Love and Need and a companion website, which includes a searchable database of the hundreds of food ingredients that are changing. The changing menu may be a way to join forces—consumers, producers, chefs, restaurateurs, and food businesses—to find a common ground and draw more attention and action to address this grand challenge of climate change. We all eat.

How to cite: Hoffmann, M.: Using the foods we love and need to enhance climate literacy, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2780, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2780, 2021.

If literacy can be defined as competence or knowledge in a specific area, then climate change literacy is competence or knowledge in the area of climate change, its impacts, and its solutions. Climate change literacy is a vital element in strategies for meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13: "Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts" — and, frankly, safeguarding the survival of the human species and most life on Earth. Developing climate change literacy in individuals, institutions, and societies entails understanding why it is important, who must be involved, what it includes, where and when it takes place, how to deal with challenges that arise, and what the end result, a climate-change-literate citizen, will look like.

How to cite: Johnston, J.: Developing Climate Change Literacy to Combat Climate Change and Its Impacts, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3815, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3815, 2021.

STEM teachers in Latvia acknowledge that the climate issue is one of the most difficult and incomprehensible topics for students because of the complexity of the climate system itself and because that students do not see the consequences and responsibilities of their actions. In addition, there is little climate-related teaching materials available in Latvian language.

In 2020, we have implemented the experience of EIT Climate-KIC project “Young Innovators” into the school's curriculum and nonformal education (through Latvian 4Hclub – leading and largest NGO) in Latvia.

“Young Innovators” is a pilot program for youngsters (12-18), to promote their entrepreneurial and social skills, systemic thinking aimed at tackling climate change, reducing environmental problems and improving the living environment. Together with stakeholders they are working on real-life challenges (more about the program: https://younginnovators.climate-kic.org/about-the-programme/).

We started with the webinar cycle for NGO leaders in April (it should be noted, that for many of them it was their first webinar ever), while in August the webinars were organized for geography and STEM teachers. In the summer (when restrictions were lifted) we had workshops with students: using the mind map and photo-voting methods, we identified the most important areas for students and the major environmental problems. Using the project tools, the analytical assessment and visioning of the problem has been done. The last step was – visiting the local authorities.

In addition, at the end of August we organized a 3-hour Climathon (total 250 participants), where we worked on the challenges given by the stakeholder - WWF (Waste food), Enefit Latvija (green energy solutions); national fruit growers (local apples marketing campaigns) etc.

Project methods and tools can be used in both – formal and non-formal education systems and were welcomed by both students and teachers.

Activities were carried out within the framework of EIT Climate-KIC financial support.

How to cite: Kalvane, G. and Krastiņa, S.: “Young Innovators” story: case study of Latvia, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5714, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5714, 2021.

Since the IPCC (2018) 1.5°C Report, the climate emergency is widely recognized. Then 2019 COP25 statement by IPCC Chair Dr H. Lee ,referring to the three recent IPCC Special Reports (2018,2019,2019) is crucial emphasizing that global emissions MUST decline by and from 2020. The Summaries for Policy Makers (SPMs) are convincing for communication as all world governments approve them. Though the IPCC assesses climate change, the environmental health emergency called climate change is climate system disruption from atmospheric greenhouse gas pollution. The IPCC assessments can be used to produce risk assessments. IPCC published climate change science reports are invaluable, especially the FAQs. The most important message in the IPCC (2014) AR5 and 1.5°C Report is that global emissions have to decline rapidly from 2020, via market failure corrections, for a 1.5°C and for a 2°C limit. The greatest impact to humanity is on food security, and from the IPCC we describe regional crop impacts and crop model limitations. We elucidate IPCC reports on confidence, carbon budget, net zero, negative emissions, value judgements, and recommendations. We clarify inertias, commitment, risks, and amplifying feedbacks. Long-term data trends, rather than only model projections, can now be relied on. We relate IPCC scenarios to worst-case, business-as-usual and best case. For risk we use the IPCC upper ranges, because long-term projected temperature increases are underestimated as they do not account for amplifying feedbacks or decline of carbon sinks, and are only based on a single median climate sensitivity (3C). Although the IPCC shows that atmospheric CO2 is "forever," IPCC SPM projections are all now only to 2100.  From the IPCC RCP scenarios the world is tracking closest to the worst case scenario (RCP8.5). On this scenario the IPCC 1.5°C Report projects 1.5°C by 2035 and 2°C  by 2047. The greatest risk to the future of humanity and most life is multiple inter-reinforcing amplifying feedbacks that lead to hothouse Earth and on to runaway. The evidence for multiple Arctic feedback emissions and Amazon die-back can be found in the IPCC 2014 5th assessment. This reinforces the imperative requiring immediate and rapid global emissions decline. 

How to cite: Carter, P.: Using the IPCC for Communicating Both the Full Extent of the Global Climate Emergency and the Required Response, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6315, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6315, 2021.

Our project “Feedbacks and Impacts of a Warming Arctic: Engaging Learners in STEM Using NASA and GLOBE assets” also called “Arctic and Earth SIGNs” (STEM Integrating GLOBE and NASA) engages in climate change education, audiences underserved and underrepresented in STEM e.g. Alaska Natives, those economically disadvantaged, and those who work in rural regions. We invite and support teams of formal and informal educators and community members from Alaska and beyond to participate in a Climate Change in My Community course and to work with youth on climate learning and a stewardship project relevant to their community. Our strategies include: 1) using a culturally responsive learning model we developed, 2) braiding multiple knowledge systems, 3) negotiating content and process in course planning and implementation, 4) ensuring a voice and a seat at the table for everyone, 5) inquiry-based, experiential and place-based STEM teaching practices, 6) intergenerational teaching and learning, 7) interactive Meet the Scientist live video sessions, 8) building relationships within and beyond participant teams and with the project team of educators, Elders and University of Alaska/NASA scientists, 9) providing skills and citizen science tools to engage youth in addressing climate change issues in their communities or for use in developing their community climate change adaptation plans, and 10) cultivating partnerships such as the Association of Interior Native Educators, Renewable Energy for Alaska Project, Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network, and the Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub.

In 2020, ten teams implemented stewardship projects that reflected many of the principles of citizen/community science that effectively engage diverse audiences. Of these course participants, 100% increased their confidence to facilitate real-world inquiry activities (p < 0.001), 77% increased their knowledge of the earth systems, (p < 0.001) and 69% of the students who teams worked with, reported increased critical thinking skills (p< 0.01).  Twelve individuals from these teams were interviewed: 100% of interviewees reported benefits to students, such as learning to collect data, presenting their findings to their peers, exploring STEM careers, and interacting with scientists; 83% reported specific benefits to themselves as an educator which include increased content knowledge and the opportunity to think more deeply about the science and opportunities to connect with students outside of the classroom; 100% reported that the project goals and activities align with and are relevant to the needs and interests of the participants, including contribution to conservation efforts, contribution to science, curricular goals, and a personal connection; 67% reported community engagement, including involving Elders and community members in data collection and storytelling, representatives of local park and water conservation district offering a science talk to the whole community, and advertising their project at the community post office. Those that didn’t report involving the community noted the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

How to cite: Sparrow, E., Spellman, K., Chase, M., Buffington, C., Murray, B., Larson, A., and Kealy, K.: Inclusive Strategies in Climate Change Teaching, Learning and Action, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7552, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7552, 2021.

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are a powerful educational tool, making scientific content available to a large and diverse audience. The MOOC “Making Sense of Climate Science Denial” applies science communication principles derived from cognitive psychology and misconception-based learning in the design of video lectures covering many aspects of climate change. As well as teaching fundamental climate science, the course also presents psychological and critical thinking research into climate science denial, teaching students the most effective techniques for responding to misinformation. A number of the enrolled “students" have been secondary and tertiary educators, who have adopted the course content in their own classes as well as adapted their teaching techniques based on the science communication principles presented in the lectures. The MOOC—developed by John Cook while at the University of Queensland's Global Change Insitute—integrates cognitive psychology, educational research and climate science in an interdisciplinary online course that has had over 40,000 enrolments from over 180 countries since the MOOC was launched in 2015.

How to cite: Winkler, B. and Cook, J.: Using an interdisciplinary MOOC to teach climate science and science communication to a global classroom, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8576, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8576, 2021.

Effectively informing the public about anthropogenically accelerated climate change and sustainable energy is one of the most immense challenges of our age. However, web-based 3D environments are cost-effective, accessible tools that can combat many of the challenges associated with global outreach, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. This presentation explores how 3D CAD modeling, visual texturing, Three.JS (a WebGL rendering software), and web design can coexist to create effective tools for educators across the world. By applying these simulations, learners are able to examine individual components of objects and break down complex systems into their fundamental parts for simpler understanding. Moreover, by breaking down these systems, individuals are able to more effectively understand the complex physical phenomena that drive our world. In addition, these environments are not limited by topic or language and therefore the spectrum to which we can apply these ideas is not limited. Translating the simulations is relatively straightforward and with the expertise of individuals who can lead this front, the reach of this type of technology can grow even wider. Climate change is a global issue and so work in the field must be addressed as such as well. As a result, these models have the ability to transform the way we learn about global issues and can be a powerful tool in education about sustainable energy, climate change and science in general.

How to cite: Sumners, R., Vargas Suarez, L., Griffiths, J., and Donev, J.: 3D Models for web based climate education , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-10232, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10232, 2021.

Geoethics arises from the awareness that, only partly consciously, human beings have irreversibly modified and are continuing to modify the natural environments and territories in which they live and operate. Humans alter not only physical, chemical and biological characteristics of their niche, but also social and cultural traits that connote social–ecological systems today as in the past, which in turn, in a feedback mechanism, influence people’s economic development, social perspectives and sense-making. It then becomes a responsibility for geoscientists to look beyond their traditional areas of work and each interact proactively with civic communities to promote changes that are needed. The key concepts of geoethics constitute a cultural proposal for the whole society, on which to base new perspectives for the human agent.
Ten years ago, the first session dedicated to geoethics was organized at the EGU General Assembly in order to widen the discussion on ethics in geosciences. Nowadays the theoretical framework of geoethics has consolidated and it has become the proposal on which to base a global ethics of the human agent towards the Earth system. This work synthetizes in a scheme the reference framework on which geoethics developed, its definition, foundations, and main characteristics, highlighting the importance of sharing values and actions among planetary human communities to manage global changes and threats.

How to cite: Peppoloni, S. and Di Capua, G.: Geoethics in a scheme: a simplified way to represent its definition, vision, and theoretical structure, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2411, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2411, 2021.

Bare twenty years into the XXI century – and what a treat. Damaging earthquakes with regional impact, climate extremes disrupting weather cycles, water shortages in high-income regions, scarcer (and costlier) energy and mineral resources, rising population. Add a slice of global geopolitical instabilities – even where one would never expect to report them from. And, well, why not: a novel pathogen, so little yet so commanding that the world is still vying with it.

Natural hazards and anthropogenic factors interact in multiple ways and across various scales, close or afar, in time and space. They interweave a web of complexities that can appear deceitful, capricious, or otherwise overwhelming to the citizens of contemporary societies – even in statistically affluent and educated ones. There comes the role of geosciences, from paleontology to high-atmosphere physics, from energy to oceanography, from the solid to the not so solid earth. There comes their transformative, instrumental task – as new and as pressing as ever.

Geosciences are not (and will not) what they used to be, bound as they are to glean lessons learned from the past to provide insight into the future. Geoscientists were once thought to study ancient rocks, fiddle with very slow-moving tectonic plates, and bantering about invisible earth’s features, too large, or too deep, or too far away to even imagine for us earthlings. But this is no longer the case – and maybe never has been. At the core of geosciences’ interests lies Nature, for what it is – with all its grand size, seemingly slow processes that unveil sudden effects, complex interactions among forces and bodies across distances and time. These prove to be paramount tools to probe a world perceived as inscrutable, increasingly richer in risks and poorer in resources.

Therefore, tools of yesterday’s intellectual quests prove instrumental to decipher tomorrow’s societal issues, such as:

- The long records of natural events (hazards);
- Far-flung origins (our solar system and the universe);
- Far-reaching effects (feedback, periodicity, and recurrence times);
- Need to forecast (or at least account for) the irregular behaviors of modern phenomena (not always known or detectable by current means).

The knowledge of compounded risks of natural origin provides an outlook on where and what to call for enduring communities. This applies also to risks resulting from interaction among natural events and anthropogenic components. Since natural phenomena embed complexities due to multiple variables and intrinsic feedback, interaction among natural and non-natural ones brings novel issues, requiring a remarkably broad outlook – global and beyond. The natural consequence is then to envision natural risks against population distribution, spatial extents of natural resources, size, and time window of induced effects.

Picking a selection of examples, this talk thus tries to put into perspective:

- Hazards stemming from multiple, at times unpredictable sources;
- The precious role of geosciences to decipher them – and to forecast them;
- The complexity of natural hazards, the flexibility of human planning;
- Modern issues challenging societies and economies – today, tomorrow, and thereafter.

How to cite: Fracassi, U.: De complexitate mundi – What a complexful world, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16180, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16180, 2021.

Humans and their environment are inherently linked, especially in coastal and estuarine regions, and scientific and social values often must be balanced in ecosystem management and decision-making. Graduate students discuss these balances in a 1-credit seminar offered via the Marine, Estuarine and Environmental Science (MEES) program, an inter-institutional program within the University System of Maryland. The MEES program uses an interdisciplinary approach to train students in scientific discovery, integration, and application to generate new knowledge and to solve environmental problems, including social sciences. In the seminar, graduate students examine these problems through the lens of Geoethics, the ethical, social and cultural implications of geoscience research and practice, using a case-study approach. After a brief introduction to the concept, students develop a list of topics to examine throughout the seminar. In Spring 2020, these topics included climate-change communication, field harassment, community-based science, sustainability science, and preserving biodiversity. At the end of the semester, students give a presentation on ethical aspects of their own research.

How to cite: Palinkas, C.: Teaching and learning about ethical aspects of environmental science with graduate students, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5782, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5782, 2021.

In previous years, the authors have addressed questions related to geoethics education, or what we have called geo-edu-ethics (GEE), in relation to geo-problems in general (such as global warming, pollution, sea-level rise, deforestation, ocean acidification, biodiversity).

In this session we wish to focus in on the greatest of all geo-problems, that of climate change (CC), which necessarily entails the urgent need for massive, widespread climate literacy (CL) – both education and learning.  We wish to examine the relationships between GEE and CL, their overlaps and differences, and how they may mutually reinforce each other.  In so doing, we will also touch on the ethics of educational and learning methods that are used to help people learn about geoethics and CC.

Currently, it seems that the two areas work in parallel, maybe even separated by a mindset of splendid isolation, and yet the apparent overlap, not least in their visons and missions, beckons us to bring the two closer together.  This is what we will attempt in our presentation.  The questions that we plan to address include the following:

• Is it true, or a misconception, that GEE and CL tend to work separately, often ignorant of each other?
• What do GEE and CL have in common?
• Their ethos, their content, their methods, their audience?
• Is it possible to unify the GEE and CL into an overarching rational and thereby form a coherent community of practice?
• What can practitioners in each bubble learn from each other? What will it take for the two bubbles to merge?
• How can each group maintain its own professional identity (if that is deemed important) and yet work hand in hand with the other, to their mutual benefit?
• What are the most effective ways forward, given the geoethical urgency of acting to slow CC?

The presentation will be interactive, as we will invite the audience to contribute their own ideas and experience.  If we are permitted to have breakout rooms, we will divide into small groups for a short time, and then bring everyone together for a plenary sharing.

How to cite: Crookall, D., Promduangsri, P., and Promduangsri, P.: Geoethics education and climate literacy: Bridging the gap – interactively, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-1763, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1763, 2021.

The need for norms ensuring ethical decision-making in policy is well established, extending to decisions made in the scientific practice that informs policy. Values, including non-epistemic ones such as social values, may guide decision-making in the scientific research process where evidence supports more than one decision given uncertainty, and are thus targeted by many normative suggestions from the philosophical literature. How value-judgements enter the body of research that underlies climate change information, with its immediate relevance for urgent mitigation and adaptation decisions, and how the norms may apply here, is however unclear.

In a practical contribution to the debate on values in climate science, we discuss the process of assessing equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), an idealised property of the real world of high scientific and societal relevance that has as the ‘holy grail’ of climate science been regularly assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. We develop a framework consisting of the steps ​model building​, ​deriving ECS​, ​combining model results​, and communicating the findings​ along with the overarching choice of research question​ and ​publishing​, and present and summarise uncertainties, choices, and possible value-judgements involved in each step. We discuss this in the context of scientific objectivity, scrutinise existing normative, action-guiding literature on values, and suggest requirements for applicable norms and ideas.

We find that both epistemic and non-epistemic values are likely to come into play in scientific practice, with the latter arguably playing a relatively larger role further along the assessment steps. A review of existing literature shows that many of the norms proposed do not reflect the characteristics and complexities of assessments drawing on climate modelling: We find that, among others, it is particularly the distribution of epistemic agency; the technical nature of many of the choices; the unpredictability of a decision for further/future model outcomes; the multi-purposeness of models; and the type of value-judgements -other than risk preferences- involved that pose challenges for existing normative ideas. This calls for the development of new such framings more easily applicable to climate science, potentially guided by the insights presented including the step-framework suggested as a way to structure the analysis of the assessment process.

How to cite: Undorf, S., Pulkkinen, K., Bender, F., and Wikman Svahn, P.: Values in (climate) science: What model-based assessments of climate sensitivity teach us about value-judgements and demands on norms thereon, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6285, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6285, 2021.

In regions with favourable subsurface condition, geothermal resources provide a significant contribution to the reduction of man-made CO₂ emissions. Its economic utilization often requires reservoir engineering that bears the risk of a number of environmental challenges such as induced seismicity, groundwater pollution or radioactive scaling.

In order to develop a socially feasible geothermal utilization concept in the Upper Rhine Graben close to the city of Karlsruhe we designed a research approach in which interdisciplinary (between natural and social sciences) knowledge production is combined with transdisciplinary knowledge production. This means that besides the collaboration of scientists of various disciplines, stakeholder and citizens s from surrounding communities get the possibility to take part in the project through workshops and interviews. The results of those transdisciplinary interactions will be integrated through translation into technical parameters in the technical design of a geothermal utilization concept. For the development of utilization scenarios, technical criteria were adopted into technical parameter ranges. Furthermore, socio-ecological criteria such as “no induced seismicity” are translated into technical parameters by an experience-based approach. The resulting scenarios are substantiated by numerical models that address the energy outcome. They will be reflected in a second stakeholder workshop. Finally, recommendations for a geothermal heat utilisation concept will be formulated.

How to cite: Schill, E., Bauer, F., Schätzler, K., Rösch, C., Mbah, M., Benighaus, C., Kuppler, S., and Krohn, J.: Co-production of knowledge: towards a co-design of geothermal heat utilization, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8597, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8597, 2021.

Geoethics have been developed as global ethics to face grand challenges for humanity by Peppoloni and Di Capua in 2020. Complementary to the UN Declaration of Human Rights the proposal of a responsible human development charter formulates universal duties to demonstrate ecological humanism. Commensurate with the need to operationalise such ambitions this paper suggests a multi-pronged approach.

Similar to conversations focused primarily on other scientific fields research agendas and practice in the earth and marine sciences would benefit from a more representative participation of actors from all fields of knowledge, genders, geographical areas, ethnic backgrounds and world views. Journals like Nature and other high-impact publications start giving more space to voices arguing for gendered research, more opportunities in academia and publishing to women and under-represented societal groups to achieve higher quality research for beneficial approaches to societal challenges.

One essential aspect is identifying and overcoming their tacit and not so tacit discrimination with a view to enable the much needed diversification of perspectives, cultures and knowledge sources in the search for a more viable trade-off between different possible responses.

Another, often linked, aspect is to ask questions in ways explicitly addressing a wider spectrum of societal risks and benefits. This is particularly obvious in health research mostly based on white male participants in clinical trials with high percentages of costly failures. But as recently becoming apparent, it also applies e.g. to AI research, now an ubiquitous tool in many research, production and service areas. Among the responses is the obligation for European research proposals to address gender in most thematic areas, including the geosciences, a requirement that almost certainly needs greater attention to avoid tokenism.

Moreover, particular attention is warranted to seek understanding and solutions for and with the substantial small-scale and artisanal sectors in mining, fisheries and other natural resource areas reviewed in earlier research. While traditional social structures can be important in some regions, unintended consequences of demand in globalised markets with strong wealth stratification are prone to create opportunistic rushes. Such attempts to get out of poverty very often come at a high cost to human and environmental health.

These challenges are best addressed by interdisciplinary and otherwise diversified research teams and inclusive forms of field testing conditions and impact of measures. These should be able to cover the multiple dimensions through in-depth, interactive study and exploration of practical approaches with socially, economically and environmentally acceptable trade-offs. Investment in inclusive quality education is expected to underpin longer-term advances towards living the principles of geoethics.

How to cite: Nauen, C. E.: Geoethics needs multi-dimensional research agendas and practice, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5413, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5413, 2021.

Large earthquakes are unavoidable because globally the plate motions accumulate stress, which leads to ruptures of the crustal rocks hundreds of kilometers long. In developed areas, this brings buildings to collapse, which injures and kills occupants. Potential rescuers are never well informed about the extent of an earthquake disaster because communication along the rupture is interrupted. We have documented that the underestimate of fatality numbers lasts for at least the crucial first few days, often for weeks. For earthquakes that cause thousands of casualties, the extent of underestimation is usually an order of magnitude. To reduce this uncertainty of whether help is required and how much, we have assembled a data set and constructed algorithms to estimate the number of fatalities and injured within  an hour of any earthquake worldwide in the computer tool QLARM. Our estimates of the population and the makeup of the built environment comes from government and internet sources. For large earthquakes, the hypocenter and magnitude is calculated and distributed by the GEOFON group at the Geoforschungszentrum (GFZ) in Potsdam, Germany and the Geological Survey (USGS) in Golden, USA within 6 to 10 minutes. Based on this information, the QLARM operator responds with an estimate of the number of casualties within 30 minutes of the earthquake, on average. These estimates are available to anyone by email alerts without charge. Since 2003, the QLARM operator has issued more than 1,000 casualty alerts at any time of the day pro bono. The USGS delivers a similar service called PAGER, which is based on different data sets and algorithms. The two loss estimates are usually close, which should give governments and news organizations confidence that these alerts are to be taken seriously. The QLARM research group also publishes research results, estimating the likely numbers of future casualties in repeats of historical large earthquakes. In such efforts the QLARM group has discovered that, contrary to the general assumption, the rural population suffers more by an order of magnitude under very large earthquakes than the urban population. It is also clear that the poorer segment of the population in cities and countryside suffer more than the affluent members of society because the former’s houses are weaker and collapse more readily. To be even more useful, a worldwide data set of hospitals and schools is needed in order to provide first responders with locations and likely damage to these critical facilities. Crucially, reliable school location data would enable first responders to focus rescue efforts on schoolchildren who die beneath the rubble of their schools in the hundreds to thousands in large earthquakes. Unfortunately, such data are not available from official sources in most developing countries, and we are not aware of good alternatives. The data on schools in open data platforms such as OpenStreetMap is sporadic. UNICEF runs a global school mapping initiative, but we have been unable to obtain their assistance to date.

How to cite: Wyss, M., Rosset, P., Tolis, S., and Speiser, M.: Earthquake loss alerts to save victims, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6311, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6311, 2021.

The year 2020 was full of challenges in many aspects, and it was not an exception for Earth Science education. Field work, which is the most effective tool for developing the capacity of spatial visualization of Geology students, was restricted, or even banned, during long time periods. The lockdown conditions highlighted the immediate need of techniques that “could” bring the field to our classrooms and homes through electronic devices.

The use of “Remotely Piloted Aircraft System” (RPAS), commonly known as drones, for geological purposes is increasing year after year involving different fields of geology, such as hazard assessment, monitoring, volcanology, structural geology among others. Drones allow obtaining, for an affordable price (compared to airplane or helicopter renting) and under safe conditions, updated aerial photography from any perspective resulting in a more efficient fieldwork. At present, there are different working teams using drones mainly for geological research purposes. However, those focused on teaching innovation systems by combining science and drone technology are still limited.

We propose the use of this technology to create 3D virtual outcrops with research or teaching purposes. Indeed, in those cases in which face-to-face teaching is not possible or the outcrop is located in a hard-to-reach or hazardous areas, virtual fieldtrips can be a valuable and safe alternative. Moreover, it approaches geological outcrops to people with physical disability or with reduced mobility promoting a more inclusive environment. Virtual outcrops also offer scientist, students and the general public the opportunity to visit, explore and study remote places all over the world with the possibility of creating a worldwide virtual catalog of outcrops with importance in Earth Sciences. Among other interesting applications there is the possibility of combining drone generated products with geographic information systems (GIS), photogrammetry and virtual modelling software’s, widely used by research institutions and universities which would open a full new scope of studies for students and professors.

Since the second half of year 2020, “Drones4Geology” cooperative, in collaboration with universities and research centers, is building a collection of high-quality 3D virtual outcrops and orthomosaics obtained from drone photogrammetry of different sites of Catalonia considered of geological interest, (e.g., Southern Pyrenean fold and thrust belt, Hercynian intrusive rocks of la “Costa Brava”) aiming to put these 2D and 3D tools at the disposal of students and researchers.

How to cite: Borrás, F., Hopfenblatt, J., Geyer, A., and Aulinas, M.: Virtual outcrops: Field work on lockdown conditions using Drones, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8269, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8269, 2021.

This contribution refers to ongoing research project funded by the Government of the Republic of Armenia titled “Geopark as an impetus for sustainable economic development and environmental protection in Gegharkunik and Vayots Dzor Provinces, Armenia” currently implemented by the Institute of Geological Sciences of the Armenian NAS. 

Tectonically and volcanically active territory of Armenia, located in Arabia-Eurasia continent-continent collision zone, is characterized by a complex geological history and the presence of a mosaic of different geological blocks and terranes, for instance, continental blocks, ophiolites and arcs merged together by long-lasting convergent plate geodynamics. The presence of internationally significant geological sites combined with rich archeological, historical and cultural context strongly supports the idea of establishment of Geopark in Armenia, also taking into account potential economic benefits both at country level and for more than one hundred local communities.

The suggested area for the first Armenian Geopark comprises several thousand sq.km, mostly in Gegharkunik and Vayots Dzor provinces. The selected area Geopark is unique also in its diverse mountain landscapes and volcanic landforms. Given the presence of active faults, volcanoes and significant examples of volcano-tectonic interactions, as well as certain well-pronounced evidence of hazardous geological phenomena, such as surface ruptures, Holocene volcanism, tectonically induced landslides, sedimentological and paleontological evidence of past mass extinction events, geothermal activity, etc., it is proposed to establish a Geopark focused on geological hazards.

Post-collisional volcanism is one of the key features of geology of Armenia and volcanological geosites play a significant role in the proposed Geopark, particularly, some of Pleistocene-Holocene volcanoes, lava flows, lava tubes, lava falls, crater lakes, as well as thick obsidian flows with records of Paleolithic use and other sites.

To date, 40 geosites, classified according to geological phenomena having an international or regional significance, have been selected and documented according to local experience and international approaches. Some of the selected geosites are characterized by a complex geological record, with a long history of research and multidisciplinary studies.

The proposed Armenian Geopark aims at wider sharing of the accumulated geological knowledge with society and attracting tourists as a factor of sustainable development. It is suggested that the establishment of Geopark in Armenia will strongly support the protection of rich geological heritage and geoconservation, contributing to sustainable management of protected areas and spreading Earth sciences oriented knowledge and education in Armenia and beyond, in the entire region.

How to cite: Meliksetian, K., Avagyan, A., Sahakyan, L., Galoyan, G., Melik-Adamyan, H., Hovhanissyan, A., Grigoryan, A., Grigoryan, T., Arakelyan, D., Shahinyan, H., Sahakyan, K., Hovakimyan, H., Atalyan, T., Grigoryan, E., Misakyan, M., and Avagyan, S.: Geological Hazards Focused Geopark Proposal, Armenia, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14287, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14287, 2021.

The American Geosciences Institute in cooperation with its member societies has developed the Framework for Addressing Racial and Ethnic Equity in Geosciences Professional Societies.  The geoscience societies are a pivotal area to influence the culture of the geosciences, and in response to the events of June 2020, many societies determined they needed to directly act on the issue of equity in the geosciences. Being birthed from a federation of US-centric organizations, the Framework has clear US-aligned approaches and boundaries.  However, the baseline proposed actions are fundamentally universal and meet the goal of the authoring committee to provide a framework from which we hope geoscience organizations of all types would use it to craft their own specific action plan and policies.   A critical component of this framework for the committee was to ensure definable actions were included.   Some of these suggested actions and their intended extensions will be discussed.  Additionally, ongoing conversations among the societies, with the US National Academy of Sciences Board on Earth Science and Resources, and other science organizations have begun to examine what the path forward looks like.   One area that AGI particularly is concerned about is the process of measuring progress.   Understanding and recognizing the impacts of efforts like this is critical to ensure agile responses for success.   But with AGI's intimate knowledge of much of the U.S. federal data, some of the ambiguities and definitional challenges within the US system complicates the ability to directly measure progress and for which further discussion of what success looks like is critically needed.  

How to cite: Keane, C., Sullivan, S., and Gonzales, L.: AGI's Framework on Addressing Equity in the Geoscience Societies and the Challenge of Defining Success, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5794, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5794, 2021.

The IAPG (https://www.geoethics.org) was founded in August 2012 with the aim to increase the awareness of the geoscientific community on ethical, social and cultural implications of geoscience knowledge, research, practice, education, and communication.
In this perspective, geoethics has been initially developed in the context of geosciences, as a rediscovery by geoscientists, and in some cases as a real process of consciousness-raising, of the social role that they can and should play in support of society to face global anthropogenic changes.
Currently the IAPG can count on more than 2600 geoscientists (belonging to 130 countries) and its IAPG network includes also 32 national sections, working to develop geoethics by focusing on local specific issues of each country, and 3 task groups. Many international organizations recognize, appreciate and support results achieved by the association, through affiliations, agreements of cooperation and partnerships.
The IAPG has coordinated numerous publications, both books and articles, supports a book series on geoethics and a new scientific, open-access, not-for-profit, peer-reviewed journal on geoethics and social geosciences, and promotes a school on geoethics.
This presentation provides an update on the status of IAPG activities, and on future perspectives.

How to cite: Di Capua, G. and Peppoloni, S.: The activities of the IAPG - International Association for Promoting Geoethics: status and future perspectives, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2347, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2347, 2021.

How to cite: Inno, L., Rotundi, A., and Piccialli, A.: COVID-19 lockdown effects on gender inequality: the case of the Italian Astronomy & Astrphysics Community, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3231, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3231, 2021.

The European Research Council (ERC), Europe’s premiere funding agency for frontier research, views equality of opportunities as an essential priority and a vital mission to ensure credibility in the review process. The ERC monitors closely various demographic data yearly on every call and has taken actions to tackle imbalances and potential implicit and explicit biases.

This presentation is focused on demographic data for the three main funding schemes: Starting Grant, Consolidator Grant and Advanced Grant. Attention is directed mainly to gender and geographic distribution. The demographics presented here consider various stakeholders, such as reviewers, applicants and grantees.

After more than 10 years of existence, ERC data provides an insight on demographical evolution. In the first framework programme (FP7, 2007-2013), 25% of applicants were women. In the last years (Horizon 2020, 2014-2019), this percentage increased by 4%, with 29% of women applied for ERC grants. In the same periods of time, the share of women as grantees has also increased from 20% to 29%. In the last years, men and women enjoy equal success rates. This presentation also sheds light on the population diversity of ERC reviewers, both panel members and external reviewers.

The ERC knows that work to ensure equality of opportunities is never finished. This presentation analyses critically the institutional efforts and considers possible steps to consolidate the accomplished results.

How to cite: Jesus-Rydin, C. and Fariña-Busto, L.: Diversity in ERC populations: applicants, grantees and reviewers, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12727, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12727, 2021.

Geoscience is being increasingly embedded in collaborative research related to the management of natural resources and the environment, alongside engineering and social sciences.  Masters students exercise rigorous choices in selecting their study courses that enhance employability, considering carefully the kind of learning experience they are likely to have. The interdisciplinary M.Sc. programme ‘Global Management of Natural Resources’ (in Chemical Engineering, University College London, UK) has generated a lot of interest since its initiation in 2016. The geoscience module ‘Geology for Global Managers and Engineers’ (GGME), is a part of the above taught programme, studied by students from diverse academic background considered in four sets, namely, set 1 (geologists), set 2 (chemists, environmentalists, ecologist) set 3 (engineers) and set 4 (others, without science background such as economics and finances).

Traditional assessment methods for geology include written examination papers, field trip reports and essays and, practical based on hand specimen and microscopic studies. But, the role of assessment is no longer solely associated with awarding a grade but, should enhance inclusion and serve as effective teaching tools (Hounsell et al., 2005; Kaur et al., 2017). This can be better achieved by applying diverse assessment methods taking into account the different skill sets of the students, ensuring fairness and consistency with consideration of increased workload for both lecturers and students (Brown, 2012). Here we studied the effectiveness of multiple assessment for the taught GGME module including a combination of software based coursework, fieldtrip activities and hands on specimen studies, spread over the term, followed by an end of term multiple-choice questions’ based sit-in examination.

Our study indicates that prior academic background did affect students’ scores in the assessments. The students from set 4 had the lowest average score, although ~ 15 % attained higher marks comparable to set 1, attributable to a combination of factors including the set multiple assessments. The students performed better in course works involving smaller learning components where there was more time for reflection. But, they scored lower when the course works were set too early or late during the term. Assessing the same learning outcome by more than one method with provided feedback worked as effective, continuous learning activities with a reduced attainment gap in the final examination between the students from sets 1 and 4, for components already covered in the course works. Noteworthy that although the students were from diverse ethnic background, there was no attainment gap attributable to their ethnicity. A combination of assessment methods with both individual and group work components proved to be effective in closing any attainment gaps between diverse groups of students.

References

Brown, S. (2012). AISHE-J 4(2), 85.1–85.12.

Hounsell, D., Entwistle, N., Anderson, C., Bromage, A., Day, K.,  Hounsell, J., Land, R., Litjens, J., McCune, V., Meyer, E., Reimann, N. and Xu, R. (2005). Final Report to the Economic and Social Research Council, on TLRP Project L139251099.

Kaur, A., Noman, M. and Nordin, H.  (2017). 42(5), 756-771.

How to cite: Basu, S.: The importance of implementing diverse assessment methods in geosciences to promote inclusion, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15093, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15093, 2021.

South Africa has an extraordinary record of human evolution spanning from our early hominin ancestors in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage site, through to more recent evidence for the emergence of modern humans.  Human evolution research in South Africa has received international attention for nearly a hundred years and has been vast and broad in terms of research foci, as well as researcher participation. However, the leading researchers in South Africa have been almost entirely men, with women and people of colour under-represented, and black women largely absent. Since its inception in 2016, the Human Evolution Research Institute (HERI) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) has developed a tangible plan to change this: to disrupting, transform and decolonise the long held patriarchal narrative of human evolution in South Africa. Our intervention has a three-tiered design, focusing on the institutional (UCT), the current undergraduate and postgraduate student body, and the public. Using HERI, we are creating more inclusive and diverse spaces for the production and dissemination of high-quality research into human origins, through both physical changes and interactive programmes (e.g. seminars, workshops). We bring young, black women into this space, facilitate cohort-building, and give them knowledge, skills and courage to be the future of scholarship into human evolution in South Africa. We have programmes in place to support and graduate a new cohort of young, black woman PhD students, as well as postdoctoral support that will provide a stepping-stone for these young women to continue in their scientific careers. Field camps are used to demystify the fieldwork experience and encourage interaction between undergraduate and postgraduate women – as well as academics – and help younger women receive the skills they need, as well as the experiences necessary to spark their interest and imagine themselves entering the discipline. Finally, in order to reach beyond the bounds of higher education institutes and out into the public domain, we are developing a new, permanent museum exhibition on human evolution at the Iziko Museum of South Africa, in Cape Town. The exhibition reframes the human origins narrative to centre on the diversity of all people in South Africa, exploring how evolution produced that diversity through a lens of inclusivity and aiming to demystify the topic in an environment that is not alienating but welcoming.

How to cite: Pickering, R., Ackermann, R., Black, W., Sahle, Y., and Wilkins, J.: How HERI (Human Evolution Research Institute) is disrupting, transforming and decolonising long held patriarchal narratives of human evolution in South Africa., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9196, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9196, 2021.

The Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Geoscience (EDIG) initiative was created to better understand the experiences of the geoscience community with respect to prejudice, inequity, bias, exclusion, sexism, and discrimination. EDIG aims to provide a platform for learning for the wider geoscience community and promote progressive action to make geoscience more inclusive and equitable.

As part of our initiatives, we organised the virtual EDIG conference in December 2020 entitled: A time to listen, learn, and act. This virtual event aimed to facilitate learning on equality, diversity, and inclusion related topics relevant to the geosciences. It hosted sessions on where we have come from, where we are now, and where we are going. The conference especially focused on raising awareness around the challenges experienced by minoritized geoscientists, helping to involve more people in these conversations. The conference hosted 17 speakers on a range of different topics, from the history of diversity in geoscience, to how we can become more inclusive, to how we can move forward together, as well as a workshop on unconscious bias sponsored by the Institute of Geologists of Ireland (IGI) and the Irish Centre for Research in Applied Geology (iCRAG).

Prior to the EDIG conference, we launched a global survey to carry out research on equality, diversity, and inclusion in the geosciences. The survey asked people about their own experiences (or lack of) around EDI related topics. The survey received a large response, with 708 participants from 58 countries. The main themes from the survey data were used to structure our conference programme.

We will present the results of this survey, and our experiences of the EDIG conference. With these and future events we hope to bring together several online initiatives, establish a community of support and learning, and to help us all come together to make the geosciences more welcoming, accessible, inclusive, and equitable.

How to cite: Doran, A., Bidgood, A., Blowick, A., Craig, J., Ekandjo, H., Fox, A., Foxe, J., Franklin, J., Hitzman, M., McAuliffe, F., Neofitu, R., Torremans, K., Twigg, H., and Wallace, E.: Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Geoscience (EDIG) initiative: A time to listen, learn, and act., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-11050, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-11050, 2021.

In recent years, several documents have been published in Europe on the shortage of skilled employees in key scientific professions. Geosciences, especially the raw materials and mining engineering sectors are no exception. One possible factor that contributes to this phenomenon is that the overall gender pattern in geosciences is imbalanced. It is characterised, more or less, by men in almost all parts of the business clusters, in society and professional communities as well as in education, research & innovation and in policy & decision making. The project ENGIE aims to improve the situation by turning the interest of young girls to study geosciences and geo-engineering with the help of a stakeholder collaboration network implementing a set of concrete actions in more than 20 EU countries.

The project is funded by EIT RawMaterials and started in January 2020 and, despite the challenges caused by COVID-19, it has achieved some significant results. First and foremost, the recent status of geo-education and the interest of young girls for geosciences was assessed via a concise survey targeting specifically secondary school students and teachers. This survey also aimed to identify any possible bottlenecks dissuading young girls to embark on a geoscientific profession. In addition to a comprehensive analysis and national workshops in 20 countries, an international online event was organised with the participation of successful women – all being role models within the global geoscientific and engineering community – in order to better understand the motivation that influenced their career choices, as well as obstacles that they were facing pursuing their career choices.

Regarding the actions focused on the target group, we organised an online video contest where girls were asked to film what they think geoscientists do at work. Additionally, some geo-activities linked to Researchers' Night events were held throughout Europe during autumn 2020. However, most of the ENGIE actions targeting young girls are planned to be carried out in 2021 and 2022 and should include the following: activities organised at University Open Days and Girls’ Day side events, family science events and school science clubs, fieldtrips, mine visits, mentoring programmes, Researchers’ Nights geoscience events, webinars, photo contest for girls, methodology course for science teachers and last but not least publishing the ENGIE Magazine. The current health crisis will, however, undoubtedly have an effect on the nature and or the schedule of the implementation of these actions as many of them might need to be moved to the online spheres or might be delayed by a few months.

The implementation of these actions at the national level will serve as the basis for the development of a long-term EU-level initiative, bringing together a stakeholder network focused on the continuous motivation of girls to embark on geoscientific careers.

Thus, the prolongation of project activities, supported by a sustainability plan, is envisaged. It is expected that future employers will be willing to invest in maintaining the ENGIE network, a 'network that works’ and thus help create a strong and more gender-balanced workforce in Europe.

How to cite: Cseko, A., Hartai, É., Majoros, L., Leskó, M., Johansson, K., Heimann, S., Giuliani, S., Torregiani, A., Łapińska-Viola, R., Pino de Juana, I., Ortega Rodriguez, A., Kolenković Močilac, I., Maričić, A., Allington, R., Stein, A., Miklovicz, T., and López, M.: ENGIE Promoting gender balance in the area of earth science and engineering, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12986, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12986, 2021.

Women in Geospatial+ is a professional network to promote gender-equality and diversity in the geospatial industry and academia. We are a vibrant and active community with more than 2,200 registered members from all over the world and over 14,000 followers on Twitter & LinkedIn. We have a range of activities all with the aim to inspire, unite and empower us as individuals but also us as a community.

This community brings together women and other people from underrepresented gender backgrounds in the geospatial field by providing a safe platform on Slack for open communication and exchange, which is especially crucial for networking during the COVID-19 era. We promote and foster the professional development of our members by sharing geospatial news and job vacancies as well as articles about diversity and tips about leadership and career development. We regularly run online career development workshops and panel discussions. Each week, we post a profile on LinkedIn to feature the work and achievements of women geospatial leaders. In 2020, our second international mentorship programme cohort grew to over 110 participants. We also launched a global speakers database which allows event organisers to search for and invite speakers from underrepresented gender backgrounds. 

This presentation will highlight key activities of the Women in Geospatial+ network, tapping into some current facts and figures on diversity in the geospatial field. We will explain how to join the community and how you can contribute to its success and expansion. Let us change the status quo together by creating a strong network of Women in Geospatial+ leaders and changemakers.

How to cite: Szeto, S. H., Wagemann, J., Porter, H., Omoja, S., and Vrinceanu, C.: Creating community and empowering underrepresented geospatial professionals at Women in Geospatial+, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15331, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15331, 2021.

Soapbox Science is quite a novel public outreach platform that was initiated in the UK in 2011 to promote women in science, and that was spread worldwide since then. Between 2011 and 2018, 40 cities hosted the initiative in not less than 8 countries over 4 continents, and in 2020, despite the pandemic, 56 events were organized in 14 countries around the world. 

In 2019, a small team of scientists and science communicators from two Belgian Scientific Federal Institutes decided to organise a Soapbox Science event in Belgium to promote the visibility and the role of women in science in Belgium. The first Belgian event took place in fall 2020, not in the centre of Brussels as initially planned, but as a virtual event live-streamed via YouTube and Facebook due to physical limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

We present an overview of the preparation and the conduct of this first Soapbox Science Brussels event, and describe the motivations, challenges, issues and opportunities encountered throughout the process, as well as the outcome and perspectives of Soapbox Science in Belgium.

How to cite: Bingen, C., Pham, L. B. S., Lamort, L., Lefever, K., Piccialli, A., and Yseboodt, M.: Promotion of women in science: the Soapbox Science outreach platform in Belgium, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8010, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8010, 2021.

The roots of modern geoscience lie in early colonial principles that land could belong to those willing to use its products, regardless of indigenous territories and practices. The production of geoscience knowledge has therefore been historically tied to a desire to explain the distribution and extractability of resources, largely for the benefit of the colonising force. This knowledge now has an essential role to play in equitable and sustainable development, but it cannot be successfully applied without diverse representation amongst geoscientists. However, Geoscience in the Global North is disproportionately white. Following on from the work of Bernard and Cooperdock in the USA, we highlight dismal representation data from Geography, Earth and Environmental Science (GEES) disciplines in UK HE and make recommendations for positive action based on evidenced effective practice.

Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences are the three worst Physical Science subjects for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic student undergraduate participation in UK HE, and are very poor for retention of these students into postgraduate research (PGR). Physical Geography had just 5.2% PGR students who identified as Black, Asian, Mixed or Other (HESA data categories) in 2018/19. On average, over the past 5 years just 1.4% of postgraduate Geology PGR students were Black (HESA, 2020). By comparison, in the 2011 Census, 18.5% of UK 18-24 year olds were from Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic backgrounds, and 3.8% were Black. In two years out of the last five, no Black women have started PGR study in Geology or Physical Geography. Retention of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Physical Geography and Environmental Science students into PGR was worse in 2018/2019 than over the five years from 2014 to 2019; the situation is not improving with time (HESA, 2020)

We summarise well-documented factors involved in inequity in research training across UK HE, and review subject-specific structural and cultural barriers to ethnic diversityin GEES subjects. These include early pipeline issues around access to nature, a scarcity of diverse role models, careers perceptions, and a lack of acknowledgement that the geosciences are deeply rooted in colonialism and white power.

Our recommendations are wide-reaching, and build upon effective practice elsewhere. We take a whole-pipeline approach, making proposals that include both advocacy to remove barriers to entry (for example by combatting structural bias in application processes and accreditation requirements), and action to broaden participation (for example, by creating paid ambassador and internship schemes, and through decolonisation and inclusive pedagogic redesign).

We must acknowledge the hostile environments that deter ethnic minority students from applying to, and continuing with, our discipline.  We must address bias and be actively anti-racist.  We must act now, to create a modern geoscience research culture that reflects the diverse nature of the planet we study.

How to cite: Newton, A., Dowey, N., Barclay, J., Fernando, B., Giles, S., Houghton, J., Jackson, C., Khatwa, A., Lawrence, A., Mills, K., Rogers, S. L., and Williams, R.: Recommendation for combatting the diversity crisis in Geography, Earth and Environmental Science research; perspectives from the UK, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-1741, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1741, 2021.

Background

Wikipedia is an open source, web-based encyclopedia, allowing anonymous and registered users to create, edit and improve articles. A survey in 2018 showed that as many as 90% of Wikipedia's editors were male and as many as 81% of contributors were from the Global North [1].  

In addition, there are fewer contributions about women, especially in STEM fields, and they are usually less developed [2]. In October 2014, only 15.53% of English Wikipedia's biographies were about women [3]. The WikiProject Women in Red was founded in July 2015 with the objective to address this gender bias in Wikipedia content. They succeeded in increasing the above-mentioned percentage to 18.71% as of 11 January 2021 [2].

Today, Wikipedia is within the 20 most popular websites [4] and every month it attracts more than 1 billion unique visitors [5]. Wikipedia therefore has a huge potential to change publics perception of who is doing science and what a scientist ‘looks’ like.

(Women) planetary scientists on Wikipedia?

In June 2020, there were only 189 planetary scientist biographies on the English Wikipedia, including 48 biographies of female planetary scientists (25%). This percentage is in agreement with the percentage of women in the International Astronomical Union from all ESA’s Member States (24%) [6], but planetary scientists are clearly underrepresented on Wikipedia. Many of them either do not have a Wikipedia biography yet, or if they do, they are often misclassified under the category of “astronomers” or “astrophysicists”.

A Planetary Sciences Edit-a-thon    

The Diversity Committee of the Europlanet Society aims to highlight diversity within the planetary science community. Therefore, they organised, in collaboration with Women in Red and WikiDonne, the first Planetary Science Wiki Edit-a-thon during the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2020 [7]. An Edit-a-thon (‘edit marathon’) is an organized event where editors from an online community (such as Wikipedia in this case) write, translate and improve articles on a specific topic [2]. Thirty persons received a basic editing training, resulting in 1 new article and 5 translated ones. A small subgroup still meets every month to continue the project.

References

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Insights/2018_Report

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Women_in_Red  

[3] Eduardo Graells-Garrido, Mounia Lalmas, Filippo Menczer, "First Women, Second Sex: Gender Bias in Wikipedia", arXiv, 9 February 2015, p. 3.

[4] "Wikipedia.org Traffic, Demographics and Competitors". www.alexa.com. Retrieved October 1, 2019.

[5] https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/all-wikipedia-projects

[6] Piccialli A., et al., Participation of women scientists in ESA Solar System missions: a historical trend, Adv. Geosci., 53, 169–182, https://doi.org/10.5194/adgeo-53-169-2020, 2020.

[7] https://www.europlanet-society.org/epsc-2020-planetary-science-wiki-edit-a-thon/    

How to cite: Piccialli, A., Boban, C., Heward, A., Lefever, K., Vandaele, A. C., Molla, M., Noack, L., and Pearson, V.: EPSC 2020 Planetary Science Wiki Edit-a-thon, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7982, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7982, 2021.

This presentation first provides an overview of a recent opinion piece by the author published in University Affairs, titled “Celebrate diversity, embrace equity and cultivate inclusion”, and then reviews anonymously some of the feedbacks the author received from the community. A main message is that diversity is easy to define and measure, and thus manage, but equity and inclusion are not and require much greater effort. We need to be innovative in this effort, as inclusion and equity, unlike diversity, are essentially qualitative, possibly with social perceptions that vary over time.

References:

Razavi, S., (2020), Celebrate diversity, embrace equity and cultivate inclusion, University Affairs, In My Opinion (Accessible at https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/celebrate-diversity-embrace-equity-and-cultivate-inclusion/).

How to cite: Razavi, S.:  Embracing equity and cultivating inclusion, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-761, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-761, 2021.

EGU, the European Geosciences Union, is Europe’s premier geosciences union, dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in the Earth, planetary, and space sciences for the benefit of humanity, worldwide. Every year, the EGU awards and medals programme recognises eminent scientists for their outstanding research contribution in the Earth, planetary and space sciences. In addition, it identifies the awardees as role models for the next generation of early career scientists to foster geoscience research.

Nominations for all the medals and awards are submitted every year online by 15 June by the members of the EGU scientific community. Any person can be nominated except the EGU president, vice-president council members (not including ex- officio members) and chairs of the EGU committees. The EGU Council, the medal and award committees’ members and the Union and division officers are committed to soliciting nominations of deserving individuals by avoiding conflicts of interest. Each EGU medal or award is selected through a rigorous assessment of the candidates and their merits through the respective committee. The procedures for nomination, selection of candidates and the time schedule are described in detail on EGU websites.

It is a strict necessity when recognizing scientific excellence by any scientific association providing equal opportunities and ensuring balance. The processes and procedures that lead to the recognition of excellence has to be transparent and free of gender biases. However, establishment of clear and transparent evaluation criteria and performance metrics in order to provide equal opportunities to researchers across gender, continents and ethnic groups can be challenging since the definition of scientific excellence is often elusive.

This presentation aims to present the experience and the efforts of the European Geosciences Union to ensure equal opportunities. Data and statistics will be presented in the attempt to provide constructive indications to get to the target of giving equal opportunities to researchers across gender, continents and ethnic groups.

How to cite: Blunier, T.: Equality of opportunities in geosciences: The EGU Awards Committee experience, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-651, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-651, 2021.

The first step for institutions committed to equality, diversity and inclusion is to know their demographics. This presentation includes descriptive statistics for 5 consecutive years (2015–2019) based on paid registrations to the physical EGU General Assembly. EGU data is not perfect nor complete, but provides an insightful overview of who attended and presented at the EGU General Assembly for a period of 5 years.

In total more than 71 000 participants attended the EGU General Assemblies during the years 2015-2019 from a wide range of countries. More than 11400 (16%) of the participants were from Germany, followed by almost 6400 (8.9%) from the UK, 5300 (7.4%) from France, 5000 (7.0%) from Italy, 4600 (6.5%) from the US, and 3500 (4.9%) each from Austria and China. We found that the number of participants to the EGU General Assembly has increased continuously from 2015 to 2019 and that the largest proportions of participants are aged between 26 and 45.

Among the PhD students attending there are 7 females for every 10 males, and among the regular members there are around 4 females for every 10 males. The proportion of female participants decreases with increasing age. However, the ratio of females to males among participants has continuously increased from 0.48 in 2015 to 0.51 in 2018. Four countries had more females than males attending the EGU General Assembly (Bulgaria, Morocco, Iceland and Slovenia).

There are great possibilities to present one’s research at the meetings with ninety percent of the participants as first author on presentations (2015-2018, 94% 2019) and there was no difference between females and males. More than half (52-61%) of the male participants had oral presentations, while slightly fewer (46-52%) of the female participants had oral presentations. The major differences in oral presentations are found between participants from different countries. Note that the data do not reveal the participants’ preferred choice of presentations, only the outcome at the meetings. Around 70% of the participants presented a poster, with no differences between genders, which indicate that men had more presentations than women. On average males had 6.5% more presentations per person. Finally a slightly higher proportion of the male participants were convenors (15-18% versus 12-15% for females).

EGU General Assembly is the largest geosciences conference in Europe and still growing. Understanding the demographic evolution of various groups is a critical tool for EGU governing body to draw targeted actions ensuring that procedures are fair and that all in the community are being and feeling included.

How to cite: Stadmark, J., Jesus-Rydin, C., and Conley, D. J.: Who attended and presented at EGU General Assemblies 2015-2019?, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15004, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15004, 2021.

The American Geophysical Union (AGU), a global scientific society of >60,000 members, has a series of initiatives underway to address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the Earth and space sciences, including the well-known issues of harassment and its impact on women scientists, and the closely related issues of systemic racism, sexism, ableism, discrimination against LGBTQ community, and their related intersectional issues. Building on its earlier work of establishing an updated AGU Ethics Policy which defines harassment and discrimination as scientific misconduct, AGU has taken additional significant steps over the past 12 months to further advance Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) practices— including work lead by the AGU Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Committee to launch a public facing AGU D&I dashboard, steps under the updated AGU Strategic plan to provide additional resources for supporting a more equitable and inclusive culture, and work and commitments by AGU leadership to address systemic racism through its “Eight Deliberate Steps.”  This presentation will highlight new AGU DEI-related initiatives most recently underway, including the role of partnerships in helping to achieve the broader DEI culture change objectives, and the associated work across AGU Meetings, Publications, and Honors. Progress to date on these and other emerging new AGU Justice Equity Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI)-related resources and partnership initiatives, including metrics to track the impact of these changes, will be discussed.

How to cite: Williams, B., Fraiser, M., White, L., Asher, P., and Hanson, B.: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at AGU:  New Leadership Commitments and Progress Under an Updated Strategic Plan  , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13133, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13133, 2021.

An equitable and inclusive geosciences discipline requires a systemic cultural shift. Despite four decades of consideration and federal investment, persons identifying as both white and men overwhelmingly outnumber people from marginalized groups in geosciences courses of study and professions. Cultural shifts can be facilitated by leadership, and research indicates that diversity and inclusion initiatives are more often effective when championed from the top. AGU, in strong partnership with other organizations and institutions, created the LANDInG program based on the rationale that both increasing capacity for DEI leadership within the geosciences and fostering recognition for the value for DEI champions are needed to significantly improve DEI outcomes across geosciences. LANDInG comprises: (1) a sustainable DEI Community of Practice Network, to engage and support a broad representation of DEI champions within the geosciences; and (2) a DEI Leader Academy, to build the DEI leadership capacity of select cohorts of DEI champions in the geosciences through intensive, cohort-based professional development tailored for them. The LANDInG DEI Leader Academy will include opportunities for direct experience leading DEI initiatives in the geosciences. Also part of the LANDInG program will be increasing the visibility and recognition of DEI champions and leaders in order to elevate their value within the discipline. Our model for change draws from research and theory spanning social and organizational sciences, including the literatures on professional networks/mentoring, and implementing effective diversity and leader training. Our methods for enacting change are evidence-based and framed by national models for cohort-based professional development within higher education/STEM. A steering committee and an advisory board of leading DEI scholars, social scientists, and representatives of other geoscience societies will broaden the expertise and diversity perspectives over the project’s life.

How to cite: Fraiser, M., Williams, B., Goodwin, S., and Asher, P.: LANDInG (Leadership Academy and Network for Diversity & Inclusion in Geosciences): AGU’s New Program to Build, Develop, and Sustain DEI Leaders, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8573, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8573, 2021.

Science and engineering rest on the concept of reproducibility. Yet across numerous fields like psychology, computer systems, and water resources there are great problems to reproduce research results. In this presentation, I identify reasons for low reproducibility in science. I share tools to make results more reproducible. I introduce financial incentives and awards to encourage you and our colleagues to make our research more reproducible. Finally, I advance a vision for what our future reproducible science should look like and I ask each attendee to identify and commit to take at least one step to make their research results more reproducible.

How to cite: Rosenberg, D.: Can you make your science more reproducible?, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16547, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16547, 2021.

To have lasting impact on the scientific community and broader society, hydrologic research must be open, accessible, reusable, and reproducible. With so many different perspectives on and constant evolution of open science approaches and technologies, it can be overwhelming for hydrologists to start down the path towards or grow one’s own push for open research. Open hydrology practices are becoming more widely embraced by members of the community and key organizations, yet, technical (e.g., limited coding experience), resource (e.g., open access fees), and social barriers (e.g., fear of being scooped) still exist. These barriers may seem insurmountable without practical suggestions on how to proceed. Here, we propose the Open Hydrology Principles to guide individual and community progress toward open science. To increase accessibility and make the Open Hydrology Principles more tangible and actionable, we also present the Open Hydrology Practical Guidelines. Our aim is to help hydrologists transition from closed, inaccessible, not reusable, and not reproducible ways of conducting scientific work to open hydrology and empower researchers by providing information and resources to equitably grow the openness of hydrological sciences. We provide the first version of a practical open hydrology resource that may evolve with open science infrastructures, workflows, and research experiences. We discuss some of the benefits of open science and common reservations to open science, and how hydrologists can pursue an appropriate level of openness in the presence of barriers. Further, we highlight how the practice of open hydrology can be expanded. The Open Hydrology Principles, Practical Guide, and additional resources reflect our knowledge of the current state of open hydrology and we recognize that recommendations and suggestions will evolve. Therefore, we encourage hydrologists all over the globe to join the open science conversation by contributing to the living version of this document and sharing open hydrology resources at the community-supported repository at open-hydrology.github.io.

How to cite: Hall, C., Saia, S., Popp, A., Schymanski, S., Drost, N., Dogulu, N., van Emmerik, T., Hut, R., and Melsen, L.: A Hydrologist’s Guide to Open Science, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-605, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-605, 2021.

How to cite: Reinecke, R., Trautmann, T., Wagener, T., and Schüler, K.: A Community Perspective on Research Software in the Hydrological Sciences , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-801, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-801, 2021.

The virtual research environment V-FOR-WaTer aims at simplifying data access for environmental sciences, fostering data publications and facilitating data analyses. By giving scientists from universities, research facilities and state offices easy access to data, appropriate pre-processing and analysis tools and workflows, we want to accelerate scientific work and facilitate the reproducibility of analyses.

The prototype of the virtual research environment consists of a database with a detailed metadata scheme that is adapted to water and terrestrial environmental data. Present datasets in the web portal originate from university projects and state offices. We are also finalising the connection of V-FOR-WaTer to GFZ Data Services, an established repository for geoscientific data. This will ease publication of data from the portal and in turn give access to datasets stored in this repository. Key to being compatible with GFZ Data Services and other systems is the compliance of the metadata scheme with international standards (INSPIRE, ISO19115).

The web portal is designed to facilitate typical workflows in environmental sciences. Map operations and filter options ensure easy selection of the data, while the workspace area provides tools for data pre-processing, scaling, and common hydrological applications. The toolbox also contains more specific tools, e.g. for geostatistics and soon for evapotranspiration. It is easily extendable and will ultimately also include user-developed tools, reflecting the current research topics and methodologies in the hydrology community. Tools are accessed through Web Processing Services (WPS) and can be joined, saved and shared as workflows, enabling more complex analyses and ensuring reproducibility of the results.

How to cite: Strobl, M., Azmi, E., Hassler, S. K., Mälicke, M., Meyer, J., and Zehe, E.: V-FOR-WaTer: A Virtual Research Environment for Environmental Research, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3356, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3356, 2021.

The eWaterCycle platform (https://www.ewatercycle.org/) is a fully Open Source system designed explicitly to advance the state of Open and FAIR Hydrological modelling. While working with Hydrologists to create a fully Open and FAIR comparison study, we noticed that many ad-hoc tools and scripts are used to create input (forcing, parameters) for a hydrological model from the source datasets such as climate reanalysis and land-use data. To make this part of the modelling process better reproducible and more transparent we have created a common forcing input processing pipeline based on an existing climate model analysis tool: ESMValTool (https://www.esmvaltool.org/). 

Using ESMValTool, the eWaterCycle platform can perform commonly required preprocessing steps such as cropping, re-gridding, and variable derivation in a standardized manner. If needed, it also allows for custom steps for a hydrological model. Our pre-processing pipeline directly supports commonly used datasets such as ERA-5, ERA-Interim, and CMIP climate model data, and creates ready-to-run forcing data for a number of Hydrological models.

Besides creating forcing data, the eWaterCycle platform allows scientists to run Hydrological models in a standardized way using Jupyter notebooks, wrapping the models inside a container environment, and interfacing to these using BMI, the Basic Model Interface (https://bmi.readthedocs.io/). The container environment (based on Docker) stores the entire software stack, including the operating system and libraries, in such a way that a model run can be reproduced using an identical software environment on any other computer.

The reproducible processing of forcing and a reproducible software environment are important steps towards our goal of fully reproducible, Open, and FAIR Hydrological modelling. Ultimately, we hope to make it possible to fully reproduce a hydrological model experiment from data pre-processing to analysis, using only a few clicks.

How to cite: Drost, N., Aerts, J. P. M., Alidoost, F., Andela, B., Camphuijsen, J., van de Giesen, N., Hut, R., Hutton, E., Kalverla, P., van den Oord, G., Pelupessy, I., Smeets, S., Verhoeven, S., and van Werkhoven, B.: Towards Open and FAIR Hydrological Modelling with eWaterCycle, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7797, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7797, 2021.

Good scientific practice requires good documentation and traceability of every research step in order to ensure reproducibility and repeatability of our research. However, with increasing data availability and ability to record big data, experiments and data analysis become more complex. This complexity often requires many pre- and post-processing steps that all need to be documented for reproducibility of final results. This poses very different challenges for numerical experiments, laboratory work and field-data analysis. The platform Renku (https://renkulab.io/), developed by the Swiss Data Science Center, aims at facilitating reproducibility and repeatability of all these scientific workflows. Renku stores all data, code and scripts in an online repository, and records in their history how these files are generated, interlinked and modified. The linkages between files (inputs, code and outputs) lead to the so-called knowledge graph, used to record the provenance of results and connecting those with all other relevant entities in the project.

We will discuss here several use examples, including mathematical analysis, laboratory experiments, data analysis and numerical experiments, all related to scientific projects presented separately. Reproducibility of mathematical analysis is facilitated by clear variable definitions and a computer algebra package that enables reproducible symbolic derivations. We will present the use of the Python package ESSM (https://essm.readthedocs.io) for this purpose, and how it can be integrated into a Renku workflow. Reproducibility of laboratory results is facilitated by tracking of experimental conditions for each data record and instrument re-calibration activities, mainly through Jupyter notebooks. Data analysis based on different data sources requires the preservation of links to external datasets and snapshots of the dataset versions imported into the project, that is facilitated by Renku. Renku also takes care of clear links between input, code and output of large numerical experiments, our last use example, and enables systematic updating if any of the input or code files are changed.

These different examples demonstrate how Renku can assist in documenting the scientific process from input to output and the final paper. All code and data are directly available online, and the recording of the workflows ensures reproducibility and repeatability.

How to cite: Krieger, L., Nijzink, R., Thakur, G., Ramakrishnan, C., Roskar, R., and Schymanski, S.: Repeatable and reproducible workflows using the RENKU open science platform, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7655, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7655, 2021.

Reproducibility and re-usability of research requires giving access to data and numerical code but, equally importantly, helping others to understand how inputs, models and outputs are linked together. Jupyter Notebooks is a programming environment that dramatically facilitates this task, by enabling to create stronger and more transparent links between data, model and results. Within a single document where all data, code, comments and results are brought together, Jupyter Notebooks provide an interactive computing environment in which users can read, run or modify the code, and visualise the resulting outputs. In this presentation, we will explain the philosophy that we have applied for the development of interactive Jupyter Notebooks for two Python toolboxes, iRONS (a package of functions for reservoir modelling and optimisation) and SAFE (a package of functions for global sensitivity analysis). The purposes of the Jupyter Notebooks are two: some Notebooks target current users by demonstrating the key functionalities of the toolbox (‘how’ to use it), effectively replacing the technical documentation of the software; other Notebooks target potential users by demonstrating the general value of the methodologies implemented in the toolbox (‘why’ use it). In all cases, the Notebooks integrate the following features: 1) the code is written in a math-like style to make it readable to a wide variety of users, 2) they integrate interactive results visualization to facilitate the conversation between the data, the model and the user, even when the user does not have the time or expertise to read the code, 3) they can be run on the cloud by using online computational environments, such as Binder, so that they are accessible by a web browser without requiring the installation of Python. We will discuss the feedback received from users and our preliminary results of measuring the effectiveness of the Notebooks in transferring knowledge of the different modelling tasks.

How to cite: Peñuela, A. and Pianosi, F.: Creating a more fluent conversation between data, model and users through interactive Jupyter Notebooks, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7755, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7755, 2021.

Open Science has established itself as a movement across all scientific disciplines in recent years. It supports good practices in science and research that lead to more robust, comprehensible, and reusable results. The aim is to improve the transparency and quality of scientific results so that more trust is achieved, both in the sciences themselves and in society. Transparency requires that uncertainties and assumptions are made explicit and disclosed openly. 
Currently, the Open Science movement is largely driven by grassroots initiatives and small scale projects. We discuss some examples that have taken on different facets of the topic:

• The software developed and used in the research process is playing an increasingly important role. The Research Software Engineers (RSE) communities have therefore organized themselves in national and international initiatives to increase the quality of research software.
• Evaluating reproducibility of scientific articles as part of peer review requires proper creditation and incentives for both authors and specialised reviewers to spend extra efforts to facilitate workflow execution. The Reproducible AGILE initiative has established a reproducibility review at a major community conference in GIScience.
• Technological advances for more reproducible scholarly communication beyond PDFs, such as containerisation, exist, but are often inaccessible to domain experts who are not programmers. Targeting geoscience and geography, the project Opening Reproducible Research (o2r) develops infrastructure to support publication of research compendia, which capture data, software (incl. execution environment), text, and interactive figures and maps.

At the core of scientific work lie replicability and reproducibility. Even if different scientific communities use these terms differently, the recognition that these aspects need more attention is commonly shared and individual communities can learn a lot from each other. Networking is therefore of great importance. The newly founded initiative German Reproducibility Network (GRN) wants to be a platform for such networking and targets all of the above initiatives. GRN is embedded in a growing network of similar initiatives, e.g. in the UK, Switzerland and Australia. Its goals include 

• Support of local open science groups
• Connecting local or topic-centered initiatives for the exchange of experiences
• Attracting facilities for the goals of Open Science 
• Cultivate contacts to funding organizations, publishers and other actors in the scientific landscape

In particular, the GRN aims to promote the dissemination of best practices through various formats of further education, in order to sensitize particularly early career researchers to the topic. By providing a platform for networking, local and domain-specific groups should be able to learn from one another, strengthen one another, and shape policies at a local level.

We present the GRN in order to address the existing local initiatives and to win them for membership in the GRN or sibling networks in other countries.

How to cite: Fritzsch, B. and Nüst, D.: German Reproducibility Network - a new platform for Open Science in Germany, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14724, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14724, 2021.

Setting up earth system models can be cumbersome and time-consuming. Model-agnostic tasks are typically the same regardless of model used and include definition and delineation of the modeling domain and preprocessing of forcing data and parameter fields. Model-specific tasks include conversion of preprocessed data into model-specific formats and generation of model inputs and run scripts. We present a workflow that includes both model-agnostic and model-specific steps needed to set up the Structure for Unifying Multiple Modeling Alternatives (SUMMA) anywhere on the planet, with the goal of providing a baseline SUMMA set up that can easily be adapted for specific study purposes. The workflow therefore uses open source data with global coverage to derive basin delineations, climatic forcing, and geophysical inputs such as topography, soil and land use parameters. The use of open source data, an open source model and an open source workflow that relies on established software packages results in transparent and reproducible scientific outputs, open to verification and adaptation by the community. The workflow substantially reduces model configuration time for new studies and paves the way for more and stronger scientific contributions in the long term, as it lets the modeler focus on science instead of set up.

How to cite: Knoben, W., Gharari, S., and Clark, M.: Facilitating reproducible science: a workflow for setting up SUMMA simulations anywhere on the globe, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3091, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3091, 2021.

The scope of this work is to present new insights of the GEOframe system. GEOframe is an open-source, semi-distributed, component-based hydrological modeling system. It is developed in Java and in Python and based on the environmental modeling framework Object Modeling System V3 (OMS3). Each part of the hydrological cycle is implemented in a self-contained building block, commonly called component. Components can be joined together to obtain multiple modeling solutions that can accomplish from simple to very complicated tasks. More than 50 components are available for the estimation of all the variables of the hydrological cycle. Starting from the geomorphic and DEM analyses, GEOframe allows the spatial interpolation of the meteorological forcing data, the simulation of the radiation budget, the estimation of the ET and of the snow processes. Runoff production is performed by using the Embedded Reservoir Model (ERM) or a combination of its reservoirs. Model parameters can be calibrated using two algorithms and several objective functions. The graph-based structure, called NET3, is employed for the management of process simulations. NET3 is designed using a river network/graph structure analogy, where each HRU is a node of the graph, and the channel links are the connections between the nodes. In any NET3 node, a different modeling solution can be implemented and nodes (HRUs or channels) can be connected or disconnected at run time through scripting.  Thanks to its solid informatics infrastructure and physical base, GEOframe proved a great flexibility and a great robustness in several applications, from small to big scale catchments. GEOframe is open source, is chain of development is based on open source products, and its codes are engineered to be inspectionable. This because it helps the reproducibility and replicability of research. Developers and users can easily collaborate, share documentation, and archive examples and data within the GEOframe community. We believe that these are a priori condition to verify the reliability and the robustness of models. GEOframe modular structure allows for the fair comparison of model structure units and algorithms implementations because just the component performing that specific task has to be changed. In this contribution we list the components available and discuss some applications at different scales whit different modeling tools which return what we think realistic results. We show that there exist no perfect model of a process but that the modelling art and science can  be made more evolutionary even when they are revolutionary. 

How to cite: Rigon, R., Bancheri, M., Formetta, G., Serafin, F., Bottazzi, M., Tubini, N., and D'Amato, C.: The GEOframe system: a modular, expandible, open-source system for doing hydrology by computer according to the open science paradigms., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7070, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7070, 2021.

Inverse problems lie at the core of many geophysical algorithms, from earthquake and exploration seismology, all the way to electromagnetics and gravity potential methods.

In 2018, we open-sourced PyLops, a Python-based framework for large-scale inverse problems. By leveraging the concept of matrix-free linear operators – together with the efficiency of numerical libraries such as NumPy, SciPy, and Numba – PyLops solves computationally intensive inverse problems with high-level code that is highly readable and resembles the underlying mathematical formulation. While initially aimed at researchers, its parsimonious software design choices, large test suite, and thorough documentation render PyLops a reliable and scalable software package easy to run both locally and in the cloud.

Since its initial release, PyLops has incorporated several advancements in scientific computing leading to the creation of an entire ecosystem of tools: operators can now run on GPUs via CuPy, scale to distributed computing through Dask, and be seamlessly integrated into PyTorch’s autograd to facilitate research in machine-learning-aided inverse problems. Moreover, PyLops contains a large variety of inverse solvers including least-squares, sparsity-promoting algorithms, and proximal solvers highly-suited to convex, possibly nonsmooth problems. PyLops also contains sparsifying transforms (e.g., wavelets, curvelets, seislets) which can be used in conjunction with the solvers. By offering a diverse set of tools for inverse problems under one unified framework, it expedites the use of state-of-the-art optimization methods and compressive sensing techniques in the geoscience domain.

Beyond our initial expectations, the framework is currently used to solve problems beyond geoscience, including astrophysics and medical imaging. Likewise, it has inspired the development of the occamypy framework for nonlinear inversion in geophysics. In this talk, we share our experience in building such an ecosystem and offer further insights into the needs and interests of the EGU community to help guide future development as well as achieve wider adoption.

How to cite: Ravasi, M., da Costa Filho, C. A., Vasconcelos, I., and Vargas, D.: Developing open-source tools for reproducible inverse problems: the PyLops journey, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5772, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5772, 2021.

Probabilistic predictions provide crucial information regarding the uncertainty of hydrological predictions, which are a key input for risk-based decision-making. However, they are often excluded from hydrological modelling applications because suitable probabilistic error models can be both challenging to construct and interpret, and the quality of results are often reliant on the objective function used to calibrate the hydrological model.

We present an open-source R-package and an online web application that achieves the following two aims. Firstly, these resources are easy-to-use and accessible, so that users need not have specialised knowledge in probabilistic modelling to apply them. Secondly, the probabilistic error model that we describe provides high-quality probabilistic predictions for a wide range of commonly-used hydrological objective functions, which it is only able to do by including a new innovation that resolves a long-standing issue relating to model assumptions that previously prevented this broad application.  

We demonstrate our methods by comparing our new probabilistic error model with an existing reference error model in an empirical case study that uses 54 perennial Australian catchments, the hydrological model GR4J, 8 common objective functions and 4 performance metrics (reliability, precision, volumetric bias and errors in the flow duration curve). The existing reference error model introduces additional flow dependencies into the residual error structure when it is used with most of the study objective functions, which in turn leads to poor-quality probabilistic predictions. In contrast, the new probabilistic error model achieves high-quality probabilistic predictions for all objective functions used in this case study.

The new probabilistic error model and the open-source software and web application aims to facilitate the adoption of probabilistic predictions in the hydrological modelling community, and to improve the quality of predictions and decisions that are made using those predictions. In particular, our methods can be used to achieve high-quality probabilistic predictions from hydrological models that are calibrated with a wide range of common objective functions.

How to cite: Hunter, J., Thyer, M., Kavetski, D., and McInerney, D.: An open-source R-package and web application for high-quality probabilistic predictions in hydrology, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8549, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8549, 2021.

An efficient method to solve a significant weakness in hydrological modelling to compute backwater effects in low lying catchments is presented. The re-usable and transferable method is implemented in the open source software KalypsoNA (KalypsoHydrology) and validated with results of a tidal influenced low lying catchment study. 
Especially in low lying (marshy) catchments, the pressure on current storm water drainage systems raises due to combined impacts of enlarged urbanisation on the one hand and mean sea level rise and heavy storm events on the other hand. Models are applied to analyse and assess the resulting consequences by these impacts on the flood routing along a stream using different hydrological approaches: (i) pure black box (namely empirical, lumped), (ii) hydrological conceptual or (iii) hydrodynamic-numerical approaches. The computation of flow depths, velocities and backwater effects in streams as well as on forelands are not yet modelled with hydrological approaches, but using simplified hydrodynamic-numerical approaches. A requirement for accurate hydrodynamic-numerical modelling is high resolution data of the topography of the main channel and the flood plain in case of bank overflow. Hence, the availability of suitable detailed profile data from measurements is crucial for hydrodynamic-numerical modelling. The comparatively long computing time for hydrodynamic-numerical model simulations is no limitation for answering special research questions, but it poses a limitation in real-time operational application and for meso to regional scale catchment modelling (>100 km²). 
To resolve the shortcomings in hydrological approaches to model water depths and backwater effects, new concepts are required which are applicable for catchments with scarce data availability, efficient for real-time operational model application, open for further model developments and re-useable for other hydrological model implementations.
This contribution presents the development, implementation and evaluation of a method for modelling backwater effects based on a hydrological flood routing approach and a backwater volume routing according to the water level slope. The developed method computes the backwater effects in two steps. First, the inflow from sub-catchments and the non-backwater affected flood routing processes are computed. Secondly, the afflux conditions are calculated which cause backwater effects in upstream direction. Afflux conditions occur mainly at tributary inlets or control structures (for example, tide gates, weirs, retention ponds or sluices). The input parameters comprise simplified or complex geometrical data per stream segment. Therefore, the model is applicable for catchments with a good or scarce availability of data. Computation time is in the range of max 3 minutes even for large catchments (> 150 km² with several sub- and sub-sub-catchments) using a time step size of 15 minutes for a 14 days simulation and is therefore applicable for real-time operational simulations in flood forecasting. 
The proposed method is re-useable and transferable to other hydrological numerical models which use conceptual hydrological flood routing approaches (e.g. Muskingum-Cunge or Kalinin-Miljukov). The open source software model KalypsoHydrology and the calculation core KalypsoNA are available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/kalypso/ and http://kalypso.wb.tu-harburg.de/downloads/. Open access for developments and user application is supported by an online accessible commitment management via SourceForge and a wiki as an online manual.

How to cite: Hellmers, S., Sauer, C., and Fröhle, P.: Computation of backwater effects in low lying (marshland) catchments – a re-usable and efficient method in an open source hydrological model, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-11714, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-11714, 2021.

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a major component of the hydrological cycle and accurate estimates of the flux are important to the water and agricultural sector, among others. Due to difficulties in the direct observation of ET in the field, the flux is often estimated from other meteorological data using empirical formulas. There is a wide variety of such formulas, with different levels of input data and parameter requirements. While some Python packages are available in the Python ecosystem for these tasks, they typically focus on one specific formula or data type. The goal of PyEt is to provide a Python package for the estimation of ET that works with many different data types, is well documented and tested, and simple to use. The source code is hosted at GitHub (https://github.com/phydrus/PyEt) and Pypi can be used to install the package. PyEt currently contains nine different methods to estimate ET and various methods to estimate surface and aerodynamic resistance. The methods are tested against other open source data to ensure proper functioning of the methods. While the methods currently are only implemented for 1D data (e.g. time series data), future work will focus on enabling the methods on 2D and 3D data as well (such as Numpy Arrays, XArray, and NetCDF files). The package allows hydrologists to compute and compare evapotranspiration estimates using different approaches with minimum effort. The presentation will focus on the problems associated with reproducibility in ET estimation and linkage with existing Python libraries to perform complex sensitivity and uncertainty analyses.

How to cite: Vremec, M. and Collenteur, R.: PyEt - a Python package to estimate potential and reference evapotranspiration, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15008, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15008, 2021.

How to cite: Jex, C., Colgan, W., Fyhn, M. B. W., Garde, A. A., Ineson, J. R., Hambly, A., Hyojin, K., Koch, J., Kokfelt, T. F., Larsen, S. H., Lindström, S., Lode, S., Madsen, R. B., Olivarius, M., Saalmann, K., Salehi, S., Seidenkrantz, M.-S., Stemmerik, L., and Svennevig, K.: A recipe for launching a diamond open-access journal with a century of geological knowledge in the pantry: Lessons learned from GEUS Bulletin, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7168, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7168, 2021.