In 2016, the most important conference on meteorology in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, called ‘DACH’, took place at the Freie Universität Berlin.

Erik J. Schaffernicht was offered the chance to give a talk in the session on climate variability. He presented his ongoing PhD research on the climate variability during the Last Glacial Maximum. In his talk, he focusses on the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) during the past and compared it to present day conditions. The NAO is a large-scale, atmospheric weather pattern, which governs nowadays the existence of persistent wind regimes for Europe.

He got valuable feedback on his paleoclimate research and the results he presented. The DACH conference provides a useful forum to discuss results with other experts in the field of paleo- and modern climate science and meteorology due to the participation of numerous meteorologists, climatologists and oceanographers. Taking part in sessions of all kind of different topics of meteorological research, Erik learned about cutting edge topics in other fields and he got a broad overview of actual research and results.

Furthermore, he could talk to the experts and senior scientists of various fields as well as establishing contacts to other PhD students in related research areas. There were plentiful opportunities to discuss paleo- and climate-research regional climate modeling and statistical methods for meteorological analyses.