Geothermal energy is a crucial component for the Energy Transition. Conventional geothermal energy uses easily accessible warm fluids that reached shallow (<400m) depths, most commonly in regions with a thin crust. I want to assess the geothermal potential of a more challenging environment: inactive volcanoes. With the use of seismological techniques, I will create a novel workflow that allows me to first visualize the size and shape of the heat source under such volcanoes, after which I will identify how high-temperature fluids migrate and reach shallower, exploitable depths. This information can be used to determine the location of geothermal infrastructure.

Strontium isotope analysis of dental elements is crucial for studying mobility but has its limitations. Manual sampling allows for highly precise analysis but is destructive as it often requires tooth extraction. Laser ablation sampling is less invasive, yet the associated analytical instrument offers lower precision. This project validates a portable laser ablation system (pLA) that causes minimal damage to tooth enamel while ensuring highly accurate analysis of the ablated material. This innovative method combines ethical benefits with analytical precision, providing a minimally destructive solution for precious archaeological, museum, and forensic specimens

The core of planet Mercury as the key to its formation history: Mercury has the largest concentration of iron core metal among planets and moons of the solar system. We will measure characteristics of iron-metals under relevant high-pressures and high-temperatures, to improve constraints on Mercury’s core’s composition. Combined with planetary evolution modelling, this will improve constraints on the planet’s formation history.

Global warming is expected to increase the frequency and severity of droughts and heatwaves. Yet, the recent IPCC report remains inconclusive on this matter and reveals surprisingly large discrepancies among studies of past trends. These discrepancies result from (a) the limited availability of global-scale observations, and (b) the imperfect knowledge of the large-scale processes and land-atmospheric feedbacks that drive these climate extremes. Both the limited observational evidence and lack of physical understanding hamper our ability to evaluate the skill of climate models at representing droughts and heatwaves. However, recent advances in satellite Earth observation, with the development of consistent global historical records of critical environmental and climatic variables, now provide the means to unravel the processes driving these climate extremes and uncover the spatiotemporal scales at which they operate. I propose to use new global satellite-derived datasets of soil moisture, temperature, vegetation water content and evaporation to study the major droughts and heatwaves that have occurred over the past three decades, and to test the hypothesis that dry soils are a crucial factor in the development and intensification of these events. These satellite observations will be combined with meteorological and balloon sounding measurements, mechanistic modelling of the lower atmosphere, and outputs from climate models. Results will reveal: (a) if dry soils are a necessary condition to generate a mega-heatwave, (b) how soil desiccation affects meteorological drought persistency and over which spatial scales, (c) where droughts and heatwaves have become more severe in the past three decades, uncovering the role of soil dryness in this intensification, and (d) the skill of current IPCC climate models at representing the critical soil-atmosphere feedbacks that dominate these climate extremes. Findings will advance towards the timely forecasting of droughts and heatwaves, and the improvement of their long-term predictions for the future.

Climate models used for projecting future global temperatures require critical evaluation using modern and paleoclimate data. Reconstructions of past warm periods needed for model evaluations are limited by the availability of paleoclimate archives. This project is designed to fill a 4-million-year gap in temperature reconstructions of exceptionally warm climate ~110–106 million years ago by delivering precise seasonal temperature reconstructions from well-preserved and -dated oyster shells. Our seasonal-scale reconstructions will provide new insights into the transition from cool greenhouse to hothouse climate and improve our understanding of the effects of the current global warming on the ocean–climate system.