Research School on Changing Climates in the coupled Earth System (CHESS)

Climate change has led to an increasing demand from society on the climate research community for process understanding, improved scenarios, reduced uncertainties, and more reliable data for mitigation and impact studies. To meet this demand, fundamental research on the physics and chemistry of the various components of the climate system (e.g. atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and cryosphere), and their mutual interactions is pivotal. This requires a new generation of researchers that have strong in-depth knowledge in their specific parts of the climate system, but at the same time are equipped with a broader knowledge to comprehend the overall picture in the coupled Earth System. Furthermore, the demand from society to be informed about changing climates can only be met when researchers are able to communicate with experts from other disciplines as well as with a layman person. The Norwegian Research School on Changing Climates in the coupled Earth System (CHESS), which started in November 2015, is a direct response to this demand and comprises 13 national partners from Bergen, Oslo, Tromsø, and Svalbard. CHESS entails most of the major institutions in Norway that educate PhD students in the Earth System with relevance to changing climates. The school currently involves 175 PhD students, with 53% females; and around 114 senior scientists, with 35% females, as supervisors. CHESS continues to coordinate a range of activities during its second last year of existence, though the activity level has been scaled down compared to previous years due to a smaller budget in 2023. A total of 6 intensive courses, workshop or summer school with different topics were organized or supported by CHESS: "Illustrations for Science" Course had 10 CHESS participants; Fundamentals of Ocean/Atmosphere Data Analysis course had 8 (2)* participants; Writing successful project proposals workshop had 12 (3)* participants; Science writing workshop with Dallas Murphy had 12 participants; and Summer school on cryospheric monitoring had 10 (2)* participants. The last activity “NorESM user workshop 2023” which is sponsored by CHESS, will take place at the end of November. The CHESS Annual Meeting in September was integrated with the annual meeting of the Norwegian Geophysical Society (NGF). This is a part of the implementation plan of CHESS legacy. The meeting was well attended with 54 participants with 29 talks and 14 poster presentations. All students presented either a lecture talk or a poster about their work, and got valuable feedback from supervisors and fellow PhD students. The future vision and implementation plan of integrating with NGF was presented to all the participants during the meeting. Note: * the first numbers are total participants and the numbers in brackets are CHESS member participants

The proposal for a Norwegian Research School on Changing Climates in the coupled Earth SyStem (CHESS) is a direct response to the 'Nasjonal forskerskole innen geofag med temaet "The Earth System"' call from the Norwegian Research Council. With 13 national partners from Bergen, Oslo, Tromsø, and Svalbard, CHESS entails most of the major institutions in Norway that educate PhD students in the Earth System with relevance to changing climates. In total, more than 170 PhD students and around 115 seniors scientist will be involved. Climate change has led to an increasing demand from society on the climate research community for process understanding, improved scenarios, reduced uncertainties, and more reliable data for mitigation and impact studies. To meet this demand, fundamental research on the physics and chemistry of the various components of the climate system (e.g. atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and cryosphere), and their mutual interactions is pivotal. This requires a new generation of researchers that have strong in-depth knowledge in their specific parts of the climate system, but at the same time are equipped with a broader knowledge to comprehend the overall picture in the coupled Earth System. Furthermore, the demand from society to be informed about changing climates can only be met when researchers are able to communicate with experts from other disciplines as well as with a layman person. In order to strengthen the national research training, the school will coordinate a wide range of activities, including (1) short, intensive courses with international expert lecturers; (2) Specialized workshops and summer schools; (3) Annual event exposing the students to the multidisciplinary challenges of climate change to societies and ecosystems; (4) Annual meeting for all members of CHESS; (5) Focus on network building and gender related issues.