We would like to welcome Franziska Aemisegger, who will be a MERGE guest researcher for the coming two years. For the coming two years, Franziska Aemisegger will be a MERGE guest researcher with a Swiss National Science Foundation Fellowship (SNSF). In her current research she is studying land-atmosphere interactions in the midlatitude water cycle from a weather systems perspective. The different

https://www.merge.lu.se/article/new-guest-researcher-franziska-aemisegger - 2025-08-29

Comparing the first simple climate models with those of today is like comparing a little blurry black and white line drawing with a large, high-resolution full-color photo. Everything has increased dramatically - both complexity, geographical resolution and model datasets. Read the interview with Markku Rummukainen, coordinator of MERGE. - The development is quickly moving forward. When we started

https://www.merge.lu.se/article/advanced-climate-models-lacks-computing-power - 2025-08-29

Lund University has collected the top research of the university's twelve strategic reseach environments in a new book. MERGE is one of these environments. In 2008, the Swedish Government designated 20 ‘Strategic Research Areas’ (SRAs) in its research-policy bill. Within these 20 areas, 43 research environments were chosen for specific funding in a special evaluation in 2009. They were all conduct

https://www.merge.lu.se/article/todays-great-explorers - 2025-08-29

Today, Monday 26 January, the new report "Klimatsäkrat Skåne" will be launched. The report is a knowledge review and analysis of Skåne's climate work including opportunities and challenges. The launch event focuses on three panel discussions on how we should make our society less vulnerable to climate change, how we use ecosystem services and the implications of climate change for business. Markku

https://www.merge.lu.se/article/new-report-about-regional-climate-challenges-and-adaptation-skane - 2025-08-29

Arctic View, CC Photo: UN, Mark Garten The role of biogeophysical feedbacks and their impacts in the arctic and boreal climate system is the name of Wenxing Zhangs thesis, which he defended on February 6 2015. On February 6th Wenxin Zhang defended his thesis The role of biogeophysical feedbacks and their impacts in the arctic and boreal climate system. Opponent was Laxmi Sushama.In the thesis Wenx

https://www.merge.lu.se/article/role-biogeophysical-feedbacks-and-their-impacts-arctic-and-boreal-climate-system - 2025-08-29

ClimBEco is a two-year graduate research school that promotes young scientists to engage in interdisciplinary research on climate, earth system and society in a changing world. Application to ClimBEco is open right now until the 14th of April. The Research School is open to students who are already enrolled as PhD students. Priority will be given to PhD students enrolled at Nordic Universities eng

https://www.merge.lu.se/article/apply-climbeco-graduate-research-school-2015-2017 - 2025-08-29

DataGURU is a tool for researchers to disseminate and find climate, land use, biodiversity and related data. The tool can also be of value as open data strategy in future applications for research funding. This work has been commissioned by the strategic research areas MERGE and BECC. The team, led by researcher Veiko Lehsten, developed a tool for the dissemination of the research data that can be

https://www.merge.lu.se/article/dataguru-new-tool-disseminating-and-finding-spatial-temporal-data - 2025-08-29

The Strategic Research Area initiative for research funding was launched by the Swedish Government in the research and innovation bill of 2008. 43 Swedish strategic research areas (SRA’s) was funded by the Swedish government from 2010-2014. MERGE is one of the SRA’s that now have been evaluated. Today the evaluation, together with recommendations for the future, was published and we are happy to a

https://www.merge.lu.se/article/positive-evaluation-merge - 2025-08-29

Photo: Luciana Porfirio Tropical rainforests have long been considered the Earth’s lungs, sequestering large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and thereby slowing down the increasing greenhouse effect and associated human-made climate change. Scientists in a global research project now show that the vast extensions of semi-arid landscapes occupying the transition zone between rainfores

https://www.merge.lu.se/article/new-article-science-shows-savannahs-slows-climate-change - 2025-08-29

On May 11-13 an international LUsTT/BECC/MERGE workshop was organized in Landskrona, with around 60 leading researchers within the field of dynamic vegetation modelling. Report from the LUsTT/BECC/MERGE Workshop: “Dynamic global vegetation modelling: towards a third generation”.LPJ-GUESS is a Dynamical Global Vegetation model (DGVM) maintained and further developed at the Department of Physical Ge

https://www.merge.lu.se/article/report-dynamic-global-vegetation-modelling-towards-third-generation - 2025-08-29

On February 24th and 25th, the kick-off meeting for the NordicESM project took place in Oslo. The aim of NordicESM is to enhance the collaboration on the field of Earth System modelling within the Nordic Countries. The project therefore involves all Nordic research groups working with the Earth System models NorESM and EC-Earth. Amongst other institutes in Europe, Lund University has an active rol

https://www.merge.lu.se/article/nordicesm-meeting - 2025-08-29

A recently published report is a revision and expansion of the 2008 edition of the BACC book. Several MERGE researchers has contributed to this work. The Second Assessment of Climate Change for the Baltic Sea Basin (BACC II), a recently published report, serves as a revision and expansion of the 2008 edition of the BACC book.“The current publication for the Baltic Sea area is a regional variant on

https://www.merge.lu.se/article/new-report-consolidates-knowledge-climate-change-baltic-sea-region - 2025-08-29

On 15-16 June 2015 MERGE's annual spring/summer meeting was held at Örenäs Castle in Glumslöv. MERGE researchers and PhD students got together for two days of discussions, scientific presentations and beautiful walks around the castle area. You can find the presentations from the meeting here. Markku Rummukainen, coordinator of MERGE, started the meeting with a background on MERGE's development as

https://www.merge.lu.se/article/merge-summer-meeting-2015 - 2025-08-29

A new working group, lead by MERGE board member Marie-José Gaillard, will work with global reconstructions of anthropogenic land-cover change over the last 6000 years for climate models. PAGES (Past Global Changes) supports research aimed at understanding the Earth’s past environment in order to make predictions for the future.The new PAGES working group "LandCover6k" has the goal to produce globa

https://www.merge.lu.se/article/new-pages-working-group-will-produce-global-recontructions-anthropogenic-land-cover-change - 2025-08-29

What are the incentives of politicians to either clean up or maintain corrupt courts in nondemocracies? Ketevan Bolkvadze examines this in a recent article published in the Comparative Political Studies. This article offers a novel take on the problem of judicial independence in nondemocracies. Some scholars hold that political fragmentation leads to more judicial independence; others argue that i

https://www.svet.lu.se/en/article/bolkvadze-problem-judicial-independence-nondemocracies - 2025-08-29

Roxanna Sjöstedt has together with Anders Themnér, Uppsala University, co-authored the article ”Buying Them Off or Scaring Them Straight: Explaining Warlord Democrats’ Electoral Rhetoric”, which has been published in the journal Security Studies. AbstractPost–civil war democracies are characterized by intense electoral competition. To ensure continued political relevance, ex-military-turned-politi

https://www.svet.lu.se/en/article/sjostedt-warlord-democrats-electoral-rhetoric - 2025-08-29

Jakob Skovgaard and Åsa Knaggård have co-authored the article “Mapping and clustering the adoption of carbon pricing policies: what polities price carbon and why?” together with Sofía Sacks Ferrari (SIPRI, formerly the Department of Political Science, LU). The article is published in the journal Climate Policy. It concerns what countries as well as sub- and supranational entities adopt carbon taxe

https://www.svet.lu.se/en/article/skovgaard-and-knaggard-adoption-carbon-pricing - 2025-08-29

Douglas Brommesson and Rikard Bengtsson have co-authored the article "Staten som kommunikatör - En panelstudie av effekterna av kampanjen Om krisen eller kriget kommer", which has been published in ”Kungl. Krigsvetenskapsakademiens Handlingar och tidskrift”. In 2017, the Swedish government took the initiative to conduct a country¬wide information campaign with the aim of informing the citizens on

https://www.svet.lu.se/en/article/brommesson-and-bengtsson-government-communicator - 2025-08-29

Roger Hildingsson has published the article ”Sustainable Welfare in Swedish Cities: Challenges of Eco-Social Integration in Urban Sustainability Governance” in the journal “Sustainability”. The article is on eco-social integration in urban sustainability governance. Based on studies in three Swedish cities (Malmö, Göteborg, Stockholm), the analysis emphasizes the challenges involved in integrating

https://www.svet.lu.se/en/article/hildingsson-eco-social-integration-urban-sustainability-governance - 2025-08-29

Annika Bergman Rosamond has recently published a book chapter titled “Celebrity global motherhood: Maternal care and cosmopolitan obligation” in the edited collection “Troubling Motherhood Maternality in Global Politics”, edited by Lucy B. Hall, Anna L. Weissman, and Laura J. Shepherd, Oxford University Press, 2020. The rise to prominence of celebrity culture is a key feature of our times. Mass au

https://www.svet.lu.se/en/article/bergman-rosamond-celebrity-global-motherhood - 2025-08-29