Prof. Dr. Michaela Hegglin
Institute of Climate and Energy Systems, Forschungszentrum Jülich

Earth observations in support of the UNFCCC Paris Agreement

For many decades, climate change has largely been presented in terms of what the future will bring. This has placed an emphasis on projections from climate models. However, it is clear that climate change is now in our face, through increasingly intense extreme events — heatwaves, wildfires, flooding — that cost human lives and billions of economic damages. Earth observations can capture the impact of such events in single images in addition to revealing, documenting, and visualising the slow changes in the climate system, which has been their traditional purpose. Earth observation thus has the potential not only to measure and help manage our impact on the Earth, but also to make climate change salient and to stimulate emotions, which are needed for decision-making and ultimately for action. In this presentation, I will argue that we scientists need to up our game in using the meaningful information we obtain from Earth observations to convince humanity to mitigate and adapt to climate change over the coming years to decades.