Press Releases

With a kick-off event on January 12, 2023, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry and the German Aerospace Center jointly opened the ELLIS Unit Jena.  Machine learning and artificial intelligence are being used to help address global environmental crises. more

The land carbon turnover times shape the response of the land surface to changes in climate. Therefore, understanding and quantifying the carbon turnover’s temperature sensitivity is key in the context of climate change. Our new study shows that moisture conditions strongly modify the apparent temperature sensitivity of carbon turnover times. more

Dr. Ana Bastos, group leader at Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, was awarded the Beutenberg Campus science award in the category „outstanding junior research scientist”. more

The Global Carbon Project presents its new report on global greenhouse gas budget trends. For the current year, CO₂ emissions are projected to be slightly higher than before the pandemic, only slightly below the 2019 peak. If emissions remain at this high level, stabilization of the climate and achievement of the Paris climate targets is questionable. more

The sources and sinks of greenhouse gases in Germany are to be better monitored in future. This is the goal of the Integrated Greenhouse Gas Monitoring System (ITMS) for Germany, which was officially launched with a three-day meeting from 18 to 20 October 2022 at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena. The ITMS is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and aims to provide the German government and the public with reliable information on the state and development of greenhouse gas fluxes. more

In August and September 2022, the HALO research aircraft is on mission over Canada. Also on board is Dr. habil. Christoph Gerbig, group leader at the MPI for Biogeochemistry. Together with researchers from DLR, the University of Bremen and LMU Munich, the scientists want to find out more about the natural and anthropogenic sources and sinks of methane and carbon dioxide. The CoMet 2.0 Arctic mission will also test new instruments for measuring greenhouse gases. more

A new study reveals that surprisingly small increases in atmospheric CO₂ lead to detectable effects on ecosystem functioning. Using simulations of the land surface model developed at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, an international team of scientists finds that enhanced CO₂ first affects entities of the carbon cycle such as vegetation productivity and the extension of leaf area. more