The ongoing climate warming requires a detailed understanding of global and regional climate variations and forecasting of their future changes using climate models. These changes pertain not only to the average global warming but also to changes in regional climate, circulation patterns and their temporal variability. To decrease the uncertainty in these model predictions, climate models have to be validated using paleoclimate data as provided by natural climate archives. Spatially representative climate modes and teleconnection patterns and their temporal variability allow for this validation and represent the vehicles to contrast rather coarsely resolved climate models to point-wise paleoclimate data.

Conference format:
- lectures by invited high level speakers
- short talks by young&  early stage researchers
- poster sessions, round table and open discussion periods
- forward look panel discussion about future developments

The conference is open to everybody interested in the topic. Participants will be selected on a competitive basis. All participants are expected to present a poster about their research.

Chairs:
- Prof. Dr. Hubertus Fischer, Physics Institute and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Switzerland - Prof. Dr. Eric Wolff, British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK

Invited speakers:
David Bromwich - Ohio State University, US; Jerome Chappellaz - LGGE-CNRS, Grenoble, FR; Jens Christensen - DMI, Copenhagen, DK; Clara Deser - NCAR, Boulder, US; Matthew England - University of South Wales, AU; Thomas Felis - University of Bremen, DE; Fillipo Giorgi - Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, IT; Gerald Haug - ETH Zurich, CH; Johann Jungclaus - Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, DE; Masa Kageyama - CNRS-LSCE, Paris, FR; Christine Klaas - Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, DE; Amaelle Landais - LSCE-CNRS, Paris, FR; Camille Li - Bjerkness Center, Bergen, NO; Zhengyu Liu - University of Wisconsin, US; Natalie Mahowald - Cornell University, US; Bette Otto-Bliesner - NOAA, Boulder, US; Joellen Russell - University of Arizona, US; Joy Singarayer - University of Bristol, UK; David Thompson - Colorado State University, US; Alexander Tudhope - University of Edinburgh, UK; Bo Vinther - University of Copenhagen, DK; Yongjing Wang - Nanjing University, CN; Rainer Zahn - ICREA, Autonomous University of Barcelona, ES

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: 22 JANUARY 2012

Conference homepage, contact, and application

This conference is organised by the European Science Foundation (ESF) in partnership with the Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck (LFUI).