Climate change is more and more recognized as the defining challenge of our times, as societies around the world are becoming aware of the potentially irreversible consequences of climate change if nothing is done to mitigate it. During the COP 21, conducted at the end of 2015 in Paris, governments and stakeholders agreed on ways to respond to this urgent threat on the basis of the best available scientific knowledge. Governments are aware of the need to reach an internationally-concerted agreement as a way to hold the increase in the global average temperature below the 2 °C threshold through a sharp and sustained reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases.
To model the differential effects of climate change on societies around the world, there is a need to understand how greenhouse gas emissions in different regions of the world change the concentration of various types of gases in all layers of the atmosphere. To this end, since the United Nations Convention was launched in 1992, governments agreed on the need to allocate resources to develop programs and networks to carry out such systematic observations. In the last decades, satellites are being used to track sources of greenhouse emissions in industrial areas, urban areas and through processes such as forest fires. Satellites offer a unique perspective that allows us to become aware of these processes in a planetary scale.
As a way to contribute to the promotion of the use of satellites and of the International Space Station (ISS) in systematic observations, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) will be conducting the “DLR Conference on Climate Change – Challenges for Atmospheric Research” from 5 to 7 April 2016 in cooperation with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). This DLR Conference aims to facilitate the discussion on the use of space-based infrastructures such as the ISS and space-based applications to support the requirements of climate protection and to identify tools and methods for a continuous monitoring process to ensure adherence to climate change agreements. The DLR Conference will bring together experts from space agencies and from UN organizations such as UNOOSA, UN-SPIDER, UNFCCC, and WMO; as well as scientists involved in climate change research from national, regional and international organizations such as the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). These experts and scientists will use the Conference to address the considerable challenges in atmospheric climate research and to identify ways in which space-based platforms such as the ISS can contribute to the provision of long-term data to be used in atmospheric models that can be used to model changes in the climate worldwide. They will also address
Information regarding the scientific and social programs of the DLR Conference, registration deadlines and procedures, its venue and other relevant facts, please visit the following website: http://www.ccc2016.net/registration
