ACEAS in Vienna

Four ACEAS researchers attended the  General Assembly 2024 of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) last month in Vienna from 14–19 April. In amongst the 18,896 presentations given across 1,044 sessions:

• Dr Will Scott presented on the  progress toward a state-of-the-art model of glacial isostatic adjustment https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU24/EGU24-6863.html
• Dr Daniel Richards presented a comparison of measured crystal orientations with those from a range of models https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU24/EGU24-13210.html
• Prof Matt King gave an invited talk on our ability to connect variability in Antarctic Ice Sheet height and mass to ENSO and the Southern Annular Mode https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU24/EGU24-4785.html,and,
• A/Prof Laurie Menviel presented on the changes in total, natural and anthropogenic Southern Ocean CO₂ fluxes over the period 1980–2021 and their relation to the Southern Annular Mode winds https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU24/EGU24-13846.html.

The annual EGU General Assembly is Europe’s largest and most prominent geosciences event. It attracts geoscientists from all over the globe, covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary, and space sciences. More than half of the delegates are early career researchers.

This year’s themes broadly covered the following aspects of Antarctic science:

• The climatic impact of a potential future temperature overshoot
• The risk of tipping points—particularly of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and AMOC, as well as cascading tipping points (i.e. AMOC tipping point triggering a WAIS collapse)
• Uncertainties in future Greenland and Antarctic contributions to sea-level rise and importance of using paleo work to improve constraints
• The progress towards modelling ice calving—critical for understanding the upper end of future sea-level rise 
• The planning underway for the International Polar Year 2032–2033 from a glaciological perspective.

The EGU24 General Assembly welcomed 20,979 registered attendees. 18,388 were from 116 countries outside of Vienna, and 2,591 joined online from 109 countries.

The EGU General Assembly reconvenes in Vienna & online from 27 April–2 May 2025.