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Age-specific exposure to human-induced increases in humid heat
Item type: Journal Article
Pietroiusti, Rosa; Fischer, Erich; Stuart-Smith, Rupert; et al. (2026)
Children are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts and will face intensifying effects of climate change during their lifetimes. Here, we show that children already face disproportionate exposure compared to older generations, as many live in regions hit the hardest by escalating humid heat stress. Combining demographic data with a global grid-scale attribution framework, we find that, at present-day warming levels, 2.8 to 3 times more children aged 0 to 9 years than adults aged 60 to 69 years are exposed to at least 20 additional heat stress days attributable to anthropogenic climate change based on both reanalysis (3.0 [3.0 to 3.1]) and climate models (2.8 [2.4 to 3.0]). On average, children experience 9 to 10 more attributable heat stress days than people aged 60 to 69 years (reanalysis: 9 [6 to 9]; models: 10 [6 to 13]), and this difference is likely conservative as children spend more time outdoors. This intergenerational disparity persists as overall heat stress escalates under global warming of 1.5° and 2°C, highlighting the need for mitigation and adaptation policies to protect children from heat-related health risks.
Governing the retreat: institutional fragmentation and process justice in Swiss glacier forelands
Item type: Journal Article
Odermatt, Georg; Hartman, Jan; Lieberherr, Eva; et al. (2026)
Climate change is rapidly transforming landscapes, creating novel challenges for natural resource management and sustainable governance. Glacier forelands – newly exposed areas resulting from glacier retreat – have become particularly significant. Their ecosystem services enable novel land uses, requiring deliberate governance to navigate emerging synergies and trade-offs. Yet research on these areas has been dominated by the natural sciences, drawing limited attention from policy research. We combine expert interviews with legal, policy, and spatial analyses to identify the Institutional Resource Regime (IRR) that governed glacier forelands in Switzerland from 2010–2025. We extend the static IRR framing using a process justice perspective to describe the dynamism of the decision-making involved. The analysis reveals an extensive yet incoherent institutional regime: numerous sectoral laws (spatial planning, water, energy, and conservation) govern the use and protection of glacier forelands, but no integrated governance framework exists, resulting in institutional fragmentation. Process justice is challenged by limited data availability, correctability, and representativeness, as well as selective prioritization and challenges to checks and balances. The resultant governance relies on case-by-case balancing of interests and reactive, project-based decisions. Beyond Switzerland, the findings underscore that emerging landscapes need to be integrated into coherent institutional regimes under accelerating climate change.
Forest chips for energy in Europe: Current procurement methods and potentials
Item type: Journal Article
Díaz-Yáñez, Olalla; Mola-Yudego, Blas; Anttila, Perttu; et al. (2013)
Forest chips are becoming an important alternative resource for energy in Europe. The aim of this study is to review and analyze the current procurement methods and potentials of forest chips in Europe, based on questionnaires sent to relevant experts in different countries as well as a literature review of existing literature. The compilation of current uses of wood chips and existing procurement methods was based on data from several professionals in 17 countries. The analysis of the forest chips potentials by countries combined data supplied by the experts as well as additional sources based in the
literature. The results showed that Finland and Sweden use the largest volumes of forest chips, and is expected that many other countries will experience a significant increase in the use to produce energy. Currently, the main source of forest chips in most of the countries are logging residues, but in the near future it is expected a shift towards increasing utilization of stumps and roundwood. In the EU, the estimates for biomass potential for energy available under current conditions were 277 M m3, for above ground biomass and 585 Mm3 for total biomass. The total long term potential is estimated to be
913 Mm3. The results of this study reveal that significant volumes of forest chips are used in most of the selected countries for energy and the experts consulted as well as the literature suggests that even larger volumes can be mobilized and novel technology developed to improve the efficiency of supply.
A robust and adaptive MPC formulation for Gaussian process models
Item type: Journal Article
Dubied, Mathieu; Lahr, Amon; Zeilinger, Melanie N.; et al. (2026)
In this paper, we present a robust and adaptive model predictive control (MPC) framework for uncertain nonlinear systems affected by bounded disturbances and unmodeled nonlinearities. We use Gaussian Processes (GPs) to learn the uncertain dynamics based on noisy measurements, including those collected during system operation. As a key contribution, we derive robust predictions for GP models using contraction metrics, which are incorporated in the MPC formulation. The proposed design guarantees recursive feasibility, robust constraint satisfaction and convergence to a reference state, with high probability. We provide a numerical example of a planar quadrotor subject to difficult-to-model ground effects, which highlights significant improvements achieved through the proposed robust prediction method and through online learning.
Testing the Superradiant Phase Transition in Dirac Landau Polaritons
Item type: Dataset
Jöchl, Elsa; Helmrich, Felix; Lindel, Frieder; et al. (2026)