Geo- und Umweltnaturwissenschaften

Sustainable Pathways, Carbon Cycle Dynamics, and Climate Change Impacts

Climate–carbon cycle–biosphere interactions, Carbon dioxide removal, Societal transformation, Decarbonization, Economic consequences of climate change

Contributing to sustainable pathways into the future is a key mission of the SPACY group. In this research area, we focus on a key aspect of sustainable development under climate change: interactions between the carbon cycle, the climate and the Earth-Society system.

Main research questions

  • How can artificial carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere support sustainable transformations? How can it impede development goals?

  • How accurate are Earth system models in capturing the response of vegetation to climate and carbon dioxide changes and how can we improve their description of the biosphere?

  • How do climate change and climate variability affect societies and economies?

  • Could new plant species combinations help to increase the CO2 fixation from the atmosphere?

On-going work & Methods

To progress on these research questions, we

  • analyze effects of carbon dioxide removal techniques on the Earth system [1], for example in the comprehensive Earth system model MPI-ESM and the intermediate complexity climate model PlaSim

  • work towards representing land use conflicts on climate dioxide removal technologies in an idealized and coupled Earth-Anthroposphere model

  • compare reconstructions and simulations of vegetation variations during the last 130,000 years and quantify the role of temperature, hydroclimate, and carbon dioxide changes in driving these variations [2, 3]

  • quantify the effect of climate variability changes on losses and damages with simple integrated assessment models

  • develop correlation models which aim at increasing the CO2 fixation with existing and new combinations of plant species

  • characterize the outdoor performance [4] of tandem solar cells for electricity and direct hydrogen production based on numerical models and climate data.

Thesis projects & collaboration

If you are interested in joining our research team to, for example, work on humanity’s transition to sustainable pathways, vegetation–carbon dioxide–climate interactions, or carbon dioxide removal, you are invited to contact us as described here. We are looking forward to learning about your ideas!

As part of our research work, we currently offer thesis projects on

  • the statistical emulation of the climate – carbon dioxide – vegetation relationships in Earth system models for improved model-data comparison

  • testing new methods for comparing simulations of the last deglaciation with pollen records in space and time

  • linking states of the Earth and climate system with indicators for the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals

and more this research area.

You might also want to check out our team members’ work on modeling climate and land use decisions or understanding climate's variability across time scales.

[1] May, M. M. & Rehfeld, K. Negative Emissions as the New Frontier of Photoelectrochemical CO2 Reduction.Advanced Energy Materials 2103801 (2022) doi:10.1002/aenm.202103801.

[2] Adam, M., Weitzel, N. & Rehfeld, K. Identifying Global-Scale Patterns of Vegetation Change During the Last Deglaciation From Paleoclimate Networks. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology 36, (2021) doi:10.1029/2021pa004265.

[3] Dallmeyer, A., Kleinen, T., Claussen, M. et al. The deglacial forest conundrum. Nat Commun 13, 6035 (2022). doi:10.1038/s41467-022-33646-6

[4] Kölbach, M. et al., The annual-hydrogen-yield-climatic-response ratio: evaluating the real-life performance of integrated solar water splitting devices, Sustainable Energy Fuels, 2022, 6 doi:10.1039/D2SE00561A