Max Planck Institutes and Experts

How stable carbon will remain in the Arctic permafrost in the future, instead of escaping into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas, is of utmost importance for the global climate. Water, ice and snow play an important role here. Our field research in Siberia uses new data and models to explain how the redistribution of water and increased snow cover, two known consequences of current climate change, can further destabilize the carbon pools in the Arctic. Our results help to assess the role of the Arctic in global climate change more reliably.    

The transition to a sedentary lifestyle with agriculture and livestock breeding during the Neolithic left genetic traces. Scientists at the Department of Microbiome Science have found that differences between people at the level of genes involved in starch and milk metabolism play an important role in the composition of the microbiome in the intestine. The recent adaptation of humans to new eating habits has led to genetic variations which are still reflected today in differences in modern microbiomes.

Biological aerosol particles are omnipresent in the atmosphere because air is one of the major media for the spread of microorganisms and pollen. The airborne particles affect climate and health. In addition, numerous physical and chemical interactions in the atmosphere lead to altered particle properties. Our research focuses on biological aerosols, their ability to act as ice cores, and the impact of air pollutants on proteins and allergies.

Preparative chromatographic processes play an important role for the separation of complex mixtures. Recent research at the Max Planck Institute in Magdeburg aims at better understanding, systematic design as well as automatic control of these processes. Special focus in this contribution is on model based analysis of processes with implicit adsorption isotherms and a new self learning control concept for simulated moving bed processes.

Eighty-three million points are needed to represent the atmospheric state every 2.5 km on Earth. Only such a grid spacing allows climate modelers to represent in their models the diversity of clouds, their small-scale details and their unique shapes which, at times, may remember elephants and, at other times, big mice. But are so many details that cannot be captured by current state-of-the-art climate models really necessary? In the following the authors present the results of an intercomparison exercise where, for the first time, eight of these next-generation climate models were run.