From 27 April to 2 May, the EXPECT project took part in the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2025 in Vienna. As the largest geoscience conference in Europe, EGU gathers thousands of researchers focused on climate and Earth system science. For EXPECT, the event offered a key opportunity to connect with the international research community, share project progress, and build new collaborations.
During the conference, EXPECT researchers presented their latest findings and co-organised several scientific sessions dedicated to explaining and predicting changes in the Earth system. These contributions align with the project’s core objective: strengthening scientific capacity for integrated attribution and prediction of climate-related phenomena.
In total, 15 project partners attended the event, which also marked the second in-person meeting of the EXPECT team, following the project’s kick-off gathering in Barcelona last year. The presence at EGU 2025 helped reinforce internal collaboration and raised the project’s profile within the European climate science landscape.
Co-chaired by Markus Donat, Dim Coumou, Christian Lessig, and Antje Weisheimer , the session organised by EXPECT at EGU 2025, titled “Explaining and predicting regional and global climate change”, drew strong interest and filled the room to capacity, highlighting the relevance of the project’s research within the wider scientific community. Markus Donat, EXPECT’s Project Coordinator, emphasised the importance of fostering open dialogue around integrated attribution and prediction science: “This session combined a variety of presentations that work towards enhancing our capability to explain and predict Earth system changes,” he noted.
Beyond this central session, EXPECT researchers contributed to several other sessions across the week, focused on understanding attribution and prediction of climate variability and extreme events. Highlights included Tamara Happé and Dim Coumou’s presentation on boreal summer circulation trends (28 April), Markus Donat’s talk on decadal prediction challenges (30 April), Rikke Stoffels’ work on North Atlantic cyclones (1 May), and Caihong Liu and Dim Coumou’s analysis of Rossby wave dynamics in the 2023 heatwaves (2 May).
Poster sessions – held both online (28 April) and in person (30 April) – provided a valuable complement to the oral presentations, fostering direct dialogue and rich scientific exchange. EXPECT researchers actively contributed to the discussion, sharing novel insights into climate dynamics and modeling approaches. Highlights included Rikke Stoffels and Dim Coumou’s work using explainable neural networks to identify tropical influences on the Northern Hemisphere wave-5 trend, Gerard Marcet Carbonell and Markus Donat’s analysis of atmospheric circulation shifts, and Vincent Verjans’ presentation on Bayesian methods for quantifying internal climate variability. All three posters were presented in Hall X5, underscoring EXPECT’s strong presence across multiple formats at the conference.
During the conference, EXPECT held a dedicated splinter meeting with its sister project AI4PEX, fostering exchange and collaboration between the two initiatives. While both projects aim to improve understanding and prediction of climate extremes, they approach the challenge from complementary angles. EXPECT focuses on enhancing climate model performance developing integrated attribution and prediction capabilities to better explain and forecast regional climate changes. AI4PEX, on the other hand, emphasizes the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to advance the representation of processes and extremes in Earth system models, with a strong emphasis on feedbacks and long-term climate changes. The meeting provided a valuable opportunity to explore synergies, share methodologies, and discuss potential future collaborations.
Overall, EGU 2025 proved to be a highly successful event for the EXPECT project. The strong turnout and engagement at the EXPECT-organised session reflected the scientific relevance of its work, while interactions with fellow researchers and sister projects like AI4PEX opened new avenues for collaboration. These exchanges not only reinforced the project’s role within the climate science community but also highlighted the value of working together to advance reliable predictions and better understand a rapidly changing climate.
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