Climate Change

To safeguard the long-term future of agricultural production in Switzerland, ETH and Agroscope are investigating how resistant the country’s crop­ping systems are to drought.

Implementation of the Montreal Protocol has successfully prevented depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer and associated increases in levels of UV-B radiation at the Earth’s surface. But many questions remain to be answered – for example, how does climate change affect the exposure of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems to UV radiation? This is one of the questions discussed in a review article, co-authored by former Eawag scientist Barbara Sulzberger, which was recently published in Nature Sustainability.

The largest glacier in the Alps is visibly suffering the effects of global warming. ETH researchers have now calculated how much of the Aletsch Glacier will still be visible by the end of the century. In the worst-case scenario, a couple patches of ice will be all that’s left.

ETH scientists have been researching the effect of precipitation and population size on rising temperatures in cities compared with the surrounding countryside. They have found that more green spaces can help to lower temperatures in urban zones – but not everywhere.