Welcome back to the second day of the 2013 General Assembly! With so many excellent sessions, it isn’t easy selecting highlights, here’s just some of the great sessions on offer today. Make sure you complement this information with EGU Today, the daily newsletter of the General Assembly, available both in paper and for download here.

Why not venture outside of your comfort zone and investigate some of the interdisciplinary sessions on at the Assembly? From Chernobyl to Fukushima: Development of the Geoscientists’ Knowledgebase (GI1.4/SSS6.11) PICO sessions will be on this morning, followed by oral sessions this afternoon. There’s also a great series of orals and posters on the occurrence of earthquake hazards on today (SM3.3/NH4.4) and for something less close to home, there’s the session on evolution in the Earth and other planetary bodies (GD6.1/GMPV11). Take a look at the oral and PICO sessions for this series here.

Find out more about the role and responsibility of geoscientists in natural hazards in today’s Geoethics and natural hazards series (NH9.8) and how we can better determine earthquake source processes in session SM2.5.

If you’re a young scientist, join the EGU Young Scientists Forum (12:15–13:15 / Room B1) over lunch – a buffet of sandwiches and soft drinks will be served.

A tethered balloon will be measuring the aerosol profile outside the front entrance of the conference centre during the coffee breaks (10:30 and 15:30) – you can watch the launch and check out the results, which will be displayed live on computer screens throughout the building.

Today’s Townhall Meetings, organised by conference participants, include the following:

• Future Earth – research for global sustainability (TM4) 19:00–20:00 / Room B6
• Shaping future climate research in Europe (TM1) 19:00–20:00 / Room B13
• IODP-ICDP Townhall meeting (TM2) 19:00–20:00 / Room B5
• JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) (TM11) 19:00–20:00 / Room B8

Finally, remember to take the opportunity to meet your Division’s representatives at the EGU Booth in today’s Meet EGU sessions and, if you’re in need of a break, head on over to GeoCinema, where you can kick back and relax with a geological film (10:30-19:00 daily in B13).

Have a great day!

Welcome to the 2013 General Assembly! This is the first full day of sessions – we’ve put together a few highlights for today below. Be sure to complement this information with EGU Today, the daily newsletter of the General Assembly, available both in paper and for download here.

Of particular importance today is the Union’s Plenary Meeting (UM8) at 12:15 in Room R1, a forum for all Assembly attendants to discuss the development of the Union in front of the Union Council. Seeing as it’s over lunch, buffet of sandwiches and soft drinks will be served at the event.

The union-wide session on the Mars Curiosity rover’s first results will be taking place shortly after this (US2) 13:30–15:00 / Room Y1) – after recent news on the Red Planet’s exciting surface geochemistry, this is not one to miss! If you have a conflict, you can check out what’s happening at the session on Twitter by following the session’s hashtag (#eguMars).

Today also features four fantastic Medal Lectures:

• Augustus Love Medal Lecture by Michael Gurnis (ML15) 09:00–10:00 / Room G11
• Hannes Alfvén Medal Lecture by Göran Marklund (ML28) 10:30–11:30 / Room Y1
• Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Young Scientists Lecture by Alexis P. Rouillard (ML4) 11:30–12:00 / Room Y1
• Runcorn-Florensky Medal Lecture by Tilman Spohn (ML31) 15:30–16:30 / Room Y1

The first round of Townhall Meetings start this evening – these are forums open to all conference participants at which new initiatives or decisions are announced to a larger audience following an open discussion on the matter raised. Today’s topics are:

• Monitoring geothermal reservoir depletion using seismic tomography (19:00–20:00 / Room B1)
• Tomorrow’s CLIVAR (19:00–20:00 / Room B5)
• Big data and software architecture meet geophysics and crisis management (19:00–20:00 / Room B3)
• ORCID: Connecting Research and Researchers (19:00–20:00 / Room Y1)

It’s also the first year we’re running PICO – or Presenting Interactive Content – sessions that combine the best of both oral and poster presentations. Take a look at what’s on here.

Finally, remember to take the opportunity to meet your Division’s representatives in the day’s Meet EGU sessions and, if you’re in need of a break, head on over to GeoCinema, where you can kick back and relax with a geological film (10:30-19:00 daily in B12).

Have an excellent day!

Townhall Meetings
Townhall Meetings are meetings open to all General Assembly participants where new initiatives or decisions are announced to a larger audience following an open discussion on the matter raised.

Anyone may organize such a Townhall Meeting subject to approval by the Programme Committee chair. Townhall Meetings will be scheduled from Monday–Tuesday, 08–09 April 2013, and Thursday–Friday, 11–12 April 2013, 19:00–20:00 in the lecture rooms of the congress centre. Applications should be forwarded to the Programme Committee chair by using the Townhall Meeting Request Form. Upon acceptance, the respective meeting will appear in the Townhall Meetings Programme as a regular session

Splinter Meetings
Participants at the General Assembly can organise side meetings during the course of the General Assembly. If the meeting is non-commercial in purpose, organisers can reserve two successive time blocks in one of the six available Splinter Meeting rooms free of charge. For commercial meetings (e.g. editorial board meetings) these rooms can be booked at a cost. In both cases, all Splinter Meeting participants are required to be registered at the conference. Interested parties should check the Splinter Meetings page on the General Assembly website for more information on the rooms and time blocks available, as well as for access to the request form.

Please note, that Splinter Meeting rooms are not available for booking as an extension of a session or a Poster Summary Discussion.

Meeting room at the Austria Center Vienna during last year’s General Assembly.

Townhall Meetings
Townhall Meetings are meetings open for all participants in the conference at which new initiatives or decisions are announced to a larger audience following an open discussion on the matter raised.

Anyone may organize such a Townhall Meeting subject to approval by the Programme Committee chair. Townhall Meetings will be scheduled from Monday – Friday, 23 – 27 April 2012, 19:00–20:00 in the lecture rooms of the congress centre. Applications should be forwarded to the Programme Committee chair by using the Townhall Meeting Request Form. Upon acceptance, the respective meeting will appear in the Townhall Meetings Programme as a regular session.

Splinter Meetings
Splinter Meetings can be organized by participants during the course of the conference, 23 – 27 April 2012. Splinter Meetings can be public or by invitation only. The EGU has reserved 8 extra rooms free of charge for the Splinter Meeting organizer(s). Please note, that these splinter meeting rooms are not available for booking as an extension of a session or a Poster Summary Discussion (PSD). These kind of requests will automatically be withdrawn. Conveners can request a PSD room in their Session Organizing Tool SOII from 30 January to 02 February 2012. To request a Splinter meeting fill in the online form.

Continuing the theme of major events at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2010:

Two Great Debates
Tuesday [Room D, 12:15–13:15]: GDG2 To what extent do humans impact the Earth’s climate?
Thursday [Room D, 15:30–17:15]: GDG1 Getting real about energy

Seven Townhall Meetings (everyone welcome!):

Monday [Room D, 15:30-17:10]: TM0 Women in Geosciences and ‘What can EGU do for Women Geoscientists?’
Monday [Room 1, 19:00–20:00] TM7 Joint ERICON -SIOS – EMSO Townhall Meeting

Tuesday [Room D, 17:30-19:00] TM1 An International Geoscience Initiative
Tuesday [Room 6, 19:00–20:00] TM2 Implementing the INSPIRE European Directive: a geoscience perspective
Tuesday [Room 1, 19:00–20:00] TM5 Joint IODP ICDP Townhall Meeting

Wednesday [Rm 34, 19:00-20:00] TM4 Hydrology Education in a Changing World

Thursday [Rm 1, 17:30–19:00] TM6 Interactive Open Access Publishing
Thursday [Rm 15, 19:00–20:00] TM3 The European Network for Earth System Modelling (ENES) Strategy and Resource Centre

By Jennifer Holden