Posted on 4 May 2026 by BaerbelW

Note: This blog post will evolve over the week and I'll be adding to it from day to day as time allows. It will be fully published and show up on the homepage at the end of the week.

This year's General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) takes place from May 4 to 8 both on premise in Vienna and online as a fully hybrid conference. This year, I had decided to join virtually, picking and chosing sessions I was interested in. At the time of initial publication this blog post was still an evolving compilation - a kind of personal diary - of the happenings from my perspective.

All told, 21,117 abstracts were submitted for the conference back in January and this year’s programme included over 1,000 scientific sessions, 62 short courses, 16 keynote Union Symposia and Great Debates, 38 Medal and Award lectures, as well as the Job Centre, Artists in Residence, GeoCinema, Science-Policy events and much, much more.

As this post will get fairly large, you can jump to the different days, via these links (bolded days have been added already):

Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday

The already published prolog blog post contains a summary of what I had planned for the week. Let's see how well - or not - the plans match reality!

Monday, May 4

EGU Today

The very first session I attended at this year's EGU conference was EOS1.1 Science and Society: Science Communication Practice, Research, and Reflection which started at 8:30 in the monring and lasted until lunchtime with a 30 minutes break in the middle.

Science communication includes the efforts of natural, physical and social scientists, communications professionals, and teams that communicate the process and values of science and scientific findings to non-specialist audiences outside of formal educational settings. The goals of science communication can include enhanced dialogue, understanding, awareness, enthusiasm, influencing sustainable behaviour change, improving decision making, and/or community building. Channels to facilitate science communication can include in-person interaction through teaching and outreach programs, and online through social media, mass media, podcasts, video, or other methods. This session invited presentations by individuals and teams on science communication practice, research, and reflection.

During this session we heard about many examples of science eduction and communication in various countries (Italy, Spain, Ireland, The Netherlands, Great Britain, Belgium...), settings (schools, university, public outreach, prisons...) and topics (Climate change, natural hazards, polar science, geodesy...):

• Lorena Salgado - SmarTerrae: Applied scientific training in geoscience from the earliest educational stages 
• Gabriele Weigelhofer - Interactive wetland education: Classroom materials following a constructivist instructional framework (Horizon Europe Restore4Life) 
• Martin Sehnal - Scientific Storytelling in Geodesy: Using Cartoons, Videos, and Digital Platforms to Reach New Audiences 
• Chiara Anzolini - Speculative Storytelling as a Tool for Biodiversity and Climate Communication 
• Rob Butler - The Shear Zone Channel – reflections on sharing geological science on YouTube 
• Reinout Verbeke - Planet Belgium: narrating the geological odyssey of a country through multimedia storytelling 
• C. Nur Schuba - Using sequential art to communicate scientific ocean drilling 
• Federica Flapp - “Signals from the climate in FVG”: a magazine enhancing climate awareness and bridging the gap between science and society at the regional level 
• Rodrigo Martinez-Abarca - A guide to outreach geosciences on social media: the case of Divulgación Terróloga 
• Maria del Socorro Fonseca Cerda - From Science to Practice: Co-Designing Windstorm Hazard & Risk Information for Dutch Portals 
• Sandra Ricart - Co-Designed, Stakeholder-Driven Governance for the WEFE Nexus under Climate Extremes: Lessons from Lake Como, Italy 
• Alex Lipp - www.SewageMap.co.uk and POOPy: Open-source tools for understanding and communicating the impacts of sewage pollution on waterways in real-time 
• Tatiana Izquierdo - Access, verification, and trust in extreme weather events communication: age and discipline matter 
• Thais Siqueira - From Landscape to Geohazard: Assessing volcanic hazard communication in Tenerife geosites 
• Deniz Vural - From Network to Ecosystem: Reflecting on Early Career–Led Science Communication through APECS 
• Carla Mateus - Prison talks: bringing climate change conversations into the Irish prisons 

This session included my own presentation right in the middle before the coffee break where I talked about our website relaunch project as already mentioned in my prolog blog post. I created a "companion blog post" for my presentation which includes all the slides and accompanying text as well as a link to download the PDF-version.

The session ended for today - there'll be more tomorrow! - with Philip Heron giving the invited Katia and Maurice Krafft Award Lecture titled What we’ve learned from teaching people in prison to Think Like a Scientist. Here is a snippet from this abstract to give you some context

Scientific thinking requires the critical analysis of information, while science itself thrives on the diversity of ideas. Yet, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects have historically struggled to be inclusive and accessible to students from underrepresented communities - meaning we often miss a diversity of voices. Furthermore, STEM subjects have often been rigid in their teaching structure, creating barriers to education for students with more specific (or unrecognised) learning needs.

To address this, our science outreach course Think Like A Scientist was designed to improve critical thinking and encourage independent thought by applying adaptive education practices to create inclusive and accessible classroom environments. The program started in 2017 and has been applied in several different settings (e.g., schools and adult learning centres), but has mainly featured in prisons around the world (including England, Canada, Australia, and Spain).

In the afternoon I joined session EOS4.1 Geoethics: Linking Geoscience Knowledge, Ethical Responsibility, and Action. This session was created by merging EOS4.1 (26 abstracts) Geoethics: Linking Geoscience Knowledge, Ethical Responsibility, and Action, EOS 2.6 (9 abstracts) From crisis to action: Education and communication for climate, ocean, overshoot and geoethics and EOS4.2 (7 abstracts) Geoscience research and collaboration in times of geopolitical crises.

Geoscientists play a key role in providing essential information in decision-making processes that consider environmental, social, and economic consequences of geoscience work. Therefore, their responsibilities extend beyond scientific analysis alone. Global challenges, such as climate change, resource management, and disaster risk reduction, push geoscientists to expand their role beyond research and to engage ethically in public efforts.

Geoethics provides a framework for reflecting on the ethical, social, and cultural implications of geoscience in research, practice, and education, guiding responsible action for society and the environment. It also encourages the scientific community to move beyond purely technical solutions by embracing just, inclusive, and transformative approaches to socio-environmental issues.

Furthermore, science is inseparable from social and geopolitical contexts. These conditions shape what research is funded, whose knowledge is valued, with whom we collaborate, and who has access to conferences. As Earth and planetary scientists, we must consider the human and environmental consequences of our work. This is especially true in Earth observation, where many satellites have both scientific and military applications, and where scientific tools have at times enabled ecocide and resource exploitation under neocolonial systems.

This session will offer insights and reflections across a wide range of topics, from theoretical considerations to case studies, foster awareness and discussion of sensitive issues at the geoscience–society interface and explore how geoethics can guide responsible behavior and policies in the geosciences. 

The nine presentations in the first half of the session covered a wide range of topics related to the field of geoethics. We heard about moral values in the scope of ecosystems and biodiversity, about creating a new curriculum for ethical awareness in Ghana, about respecting indegenous knowledge in Australia in the era of big data, about turning sustainability into practice, about a workers.coop in the UK creating data tools for scientists, about avoiding "impact washing", about the ethical usage of AI and LLMs, about the ongoing anthropocene debate and the needed ethical framework for climate intervention research:

• Jeannine G.M. de Caluwe - Ecological Moral Voluntarism is a Corollary of Ethical Education 
• Samuel Nyarko - Paving the way for geoethics pedagogy in Ghana: what students’ geoethical reasoning reveals 
• Simon Haberle - Humanising Natural History Collections: Putting CARE principles into practice in the geosciences in Australia 
• Janne J. Salovaara - Critical Sustainability in Geosciences — A praxis 
• Jacqueline Campbell - Worker Co-operative Research Laboratories; An Alternative Model for Ambitious Science 
• Rosa Rantanen - Social impact or impact washing? The case for a deeper ethical understanding and concrete action 
• Paul Cleverley - Fostering the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence in the Geosciences 
• Emlyn Koster - The Anthropocene as Earth’s natural to unnatural history transition 
• Billy Williams - An Ethical Framework for Climate Intervention Research: Keeping Pace with Rapidly Evolving Needs 

After the coffee break we heard about the EU's high dependency on critical raw materials, how AGU responds in the U.S. with science being under threat by the current administration, about solar-radiation management concerns in Pakistan, about Climate Interactive's en-Roads simulator and how its utilized, about the game ClimarisQ, about the 30th anniversary of Ukraine's Antarctic Station Akademik Vernadsky, about the Palestine Space Institute and doing science in regions of war, about different measures scientific institutions are taking (or not) in case of armed conflicts and genocide:

• Ludwig Hermann - Four-pillar policy recommendation to increase the European Union’s critical raw material resilience 
• Janice Lachance - Meeting the Moment: Sustaining Climate Science and Engagement in Shifting Policy Environments 
• Abdul Waheed - Towards Inclusive and Ethical SRM Governance in Pakistan: Bridging Policy Gaps and Global South Representation 
• Juliette Rooney-Varga - Interactive simulation with En-ROADS spurs climate action among decision-makers 
• Davide Faranda - ClimarisQ: What can we learn by playing a game for climate education? 
• Svitlana Krakovska - From Polar Science to Public Action: 30 Years of the Ukrainian Antarctic Station Akademik Vernadsky in Times of Polycrisis  
• Divya M Persaud - Political Education in Science: Two Years of Palestine Space Institute 
• Stefano Corradini - Beyond Scientific Neutrality: Ethical Responsibility and Geopolitical Accountability in Public Research Institutions 
• Shahzad Gani - Best practices for geosciences in the time of crises 

In this part of the session, I had the chance to tell participants about the results of the Skeptical Science experiment. Like with my other presentation you can read up on it in a companion article from where you can also download the PDF-version of my talk.

Before my presentation I had asked Pimnutcha Promduangsri to grab a few pictures onsite in Vienna to also get some impressions from how it looked like as seen in the conference room. Here is a compilation of some of the images Pim was kind enough to send over:

Tuesday, May 5

EGU Today

Tuesday morning started at 8:30 with the 2nd half of EOS1.1 Science and Society: Science Communication Practice, Research, and Reflection and lasted until lunchtime with a 30 minutes break in the middle.

In the presentations before the coffee break, the speakers told us about projects in Switzerland, Hongkong, France, Japan, Greenland, Italy, the UK and the United States. We heard about projects related to food, rainfall, soil, caves, air quality, clean water and flood hydrology and how they were used in communication and outreach activities with the public.

• Alex Valach - Community outreach using positive sensory experiences: A taste of climate change 
• Hermione Mok - Communicating Food and Climate: The Role of Science Communication for Engagement 
• Auguste Gires - Enhancing awareness of the geophysical environment through a multisensory rainfall experience 
• Keiko Mori  - Appealing to the senses, long-run workshops and exhibitions on soil for museum visitors 
• Gina E. Moseley - Science communication in Greenland: Experiences from the Kalaallit Nunaat Caves and Climate Outreach Project (KINDLE) 
• Marta Galvagno - Engaging young audiences in climate change: moving beyond fear through active science communication 
• Carly Reddington - Visualising historical changes in air pollution with the Air Quality Stripes 
• Luisa Galgani - The Italian Citizen Science Observatory: a growing association open to collaboration to foster public participation and education in water research Europe-wide 
• Lisa Gallagher - Learning, creating, and sharing: A science communication framework for water and climate education 
• Linda Speight - Communication within the UK flood hydrology community: bridging the gaps between science and practice 

After the coffee break we heard about AI-created virtual climate scientists, how generative AI could be utilized for paleontological communication, how some activism increases trust in climate scientists, how science communication and activism is impacted by authoritarianism and how knowledge can be made relevant for society as well as for individual choices. Last but not least, Joshua Howgeg gave the Angela Croome Award Lecture in which he talked about lessons for non-ficting writing based on his experience as a magazine editor.

• Corinne Brevik - Creating AI-driven Virtual Climate Scientists to introduce both students and the general public to climate science careers 
• Luis Azevedo Rodrigues - Generative AI and 3D Digital Technologies for Paleontological Heritage Communication: An Epistemological Framework and Practical Applications 
• Erik van Sebille - A little bit of activism increases trust in climate scientists 
• Karsten Haustein - Science communication and academic activism in times of rising authoritarianism and Trumpism 
• Rosa Rodríguez Gasén - From Knowledge Production to Societal Relevance in Earth Sciences 
• Elena Claire Ricci - Expanding the Space of Climate Agency: From Individual Decisions to System Dynamics 
• Joshua Howgeg - Sleepy cat and the cosmic dust: Lessons for non-fiction writing from 10 years as a magazine editor - Angela Croome Award Lecture

After the lunch break I joined short course SC3.4 Science Diplomacy: What is it and how to engage to learn more about the overlap between science and diplomacy. This course was convened by Lene Topp, Zsanett Greta Papp, Alfonso Acosta and Noel Baker who all gave short keynote about their connections with the topic. They were joined online by Jan Marco Müller who gave a short presentation about his path from geoscientists into science diplomacy at the European Commission.

Global challenges, such as climate change and natural hazards, are becoming increasingly complex and interdependent, and solutions have to be global in scope and based on a firm scientific understanding of the challenges we face. At the same time, Science and technology are playing an increasingly important role in a complex geopolitical landscape. In this difficult setting, scientific collaboration can not only be used to help address global challenges but also to foster international relations and build bridges across geopolitical divisions. Science diplomacy is a broad term used both to describe the various roles that science and researchers play in bridging geopolitical gaps and finding solutions to international issues, and also the study of how science intertwines with diplomacy in pursuing these goals.

During this Short Course, science diplomacy experts will introduce key science diplomacy concepts and outline the skills that are required to effectively engage in science diplomacy. They will also provide practical insights on how researchers can actively participate in science diplomacy, explore real-life examples of science diplomacy, and highlight resources where participants can learn more about science diplomacy moving forward.

Here are some of my take-aways from this course:

• Science and diplomacy are intricitely linked in that one informs the other and one is needed for the other and this goes both ways in each case
• The rise of populism and authoriatarianism are changing the landscape
• Geoscience has a lot of touchpoints with diplomacy
• Quote (Maria Leptin): "We don't ask our researchers to be diplomats - yet their excellent science naturally feeds into global policy."
• Nations retreat from multilateralism
• Nations put up barriers to international scientific collaboration
• Some challenge evidence-informed policymaking
• Scientific endeavours like turning a wetland into a protected area can have diplomatic implications if the water comes from across the border or if too much water is used for agriculture
• Right now, scientific spending often has to compete with defense spending
• Some institutions may be tempted to accept defense funding for "dual use" research
• Such "dual use research" could however make an institution's campus a military target in case of war

Resources linked in the presentation for anybody interested in learning more:

• EU Science Diplomacy Alliance
• Free online 8-module introduction course on Science Diplomacy
• 9 case studies on Science Diplomacy
• The World Academy of Sciences
• Towards a European Framework for Science Diplomacy (e.g. new EU report)
• Article: What is a Science Diplomat?
• Article: Building a Science Diplomacy Curriculum
• EGU GeoPolicy Blog: Science Diplomacy in a new Geopolitical order
• The Science Diplomat

After the afternoon coffee-break it was time for a fun but most likely challenging session for the authors: EOS1.6 - Up-Goer Five Challenge: Making Big Ideas Simpler by Talking About Them in Words We Use a Lot. The session was held in one the underground PICO sessions and unfortunately, the Zoom-sessions wasn't completely stable, so I didn't always get the full presentation.

Whether you thrill at the chance to tell taxi drivers and dinner-table companions about your research or want to hide every time someone asks, “What do you do?”, we offer an exciting and valuable challenge for you.

Inspired by the XKCD comic that describes the Saturn V Rocket using only the thousand most common words in English (https://xkcd.com/1133/), we ask speakers to present short (~5-minute) scientific talks using the same vocabulary (determined via the Up-Goer Five Text Editor: https://splasho.com/upgoer5). The talk is preferably about your own research but can also be about a general topic you are interested in. 

Here are some examples for Up-Goer-Five lingo - can you guess what they describe (solutions below the image)?

1. people-flying things
2. sky water
3. space eye in the sky
4. black underground burn stuff
5. computer pictures
6. middle water
7. cold part of the world with water

Solutions:

1. people-flying things = airplanes
2. sky water = rain
3. space eye in the sky = satellite
4. black underground burn stuff = coal & oil
5. computer pictures = models
6. middle water = Mediterranean Sea
7. cold part of the world with water = Arctic

Wednesday, May 6

EGU Today

Plans for the day:

Starting the day with Union Symposia  US6 - Climate change, morals, values and policies, convened by Noel Baker, Chloe Hill, Mario Scharfbillig, Emmanuel Salmon and Maria Vittoria Gargiulo:

The climate challenge is no longer only about understanding the Earth system, it is also about understanding ourselves as humans. As a global society, response to climate change information and climate action policies is shaped not only by scientific evidence, but also by moral values, cultural identities, religious beliefs, fears, and psychological dynamics. Attitudes that may appear irrational often reflect deeper questions of meaning, trust, and social belonging. How can scientists and governments communicate climate science in ways that resonate with diverse societies without resorting to manipulative tactics? How can decision-makers design ethical and inclusive policies that inspire meaningful action at individual, community, and societal levels?

This Union Symposium will bring together experts from multiple disciplines to explore these questions through both scientific research and practical experience. Speakers will examine the moral, psychological, cultural, and social dimensions that shape public engagement with climate change. Perspectives from religious traditions, as well as indigenous and marginalized communities, will broaden the dialogue and offer insights into how climate communication and policy can become more inclusive, trustworthy, and impactful.

After the lunch break I might join short course  SC3.13 - Get your writing right: A hands-on, participatory workshop to help improve writing skills, but this will depend on whether it allows for meaningful online-participation. 

Writing is difficult. Like most geoscientists, you might struggle, especially if your native tongue is not English. Writing is a skill best learnt by practice, lots of it, ideally with immediate peer feedback. It can also be a lonely job. In this hands-on, participatory workshop you will work on a writing task with colleagues, sharing inspiration and getting immediate feedback. The task illustrates in vivid fashion some key elements of writing.

If previous years are an indication, the afternoon PICO session EOS1.3 - Games for Geoscience will showcase many creative ways of how to turn science into fun learning experiences. The session is convened by Christopher Skinner, Rolf Hut, Elizabeth Lewis, Lisa Gallagher and Maria Elena Orduna Alegria.

Games have the power to ignite imaginations and place you in someone else’s shoes or situation, often forcing you into making decisions from perspectives other than your own. This makes them powerful tools for communication, through use in outreach, disseminating research, in education and teaching at all levels, and as a method to train the public, practitioners, and decision-makers in order to build environmental resilience.

Games can also inspire innovative and fun approaches to learning. Gamification and game-based approaches add an extra spark of engagement and interaction with a topic. Gaming technology (e.g. virtual reality) can transport and immerse people into new worlds providing fascinating and otherwise impossible experiences for learners.

Let's see how the day will shape up!

Thursday, May 7

EGU Today

Friday, May 8

EGU Today

Summary