PICO
Inspired by the XKCD comic that describes the Saturn V Rocket using only the thousand most common words in English (http://xkcd.com/1133/), we ask speakers to present short (~5-minute) scientific talks using the same vocabulary (determined via the Up-Goer Five Text Editor: http://splasho.com/upgoer5). The talk is preferably about your own research but can also be about a general topic you are interested in.
Why should you contribute to this session? The section below is written using the Up-Goer Five Text Editor:
When you change the kinds of words you use to explain what you do, you:
- Find what is at the heart of your work.
- Can now tell ANYONE what you study, because you can make things as simple as they can be.
- Show that it matters to explain what you do so others can understand, even if it's hard.
For motivation, check out the Up-Goer Five talks from AGU Fall Meeting 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxWrerZhfrk. Join us for an inspiring session and learn about your and others' research in new and beautifully simple ways!
When the world warms, the cold part of the world over water warms fastest. In the last three times ten years, this coldest parts has warmed three to four times faster than the whole world. It is warming faster because when it warms, there is more water instead of ice. Water becomes more warm than ice when the sun is up because it is darker, and the sun warms dark things more than bright things. But the cold part warms most when the sun is down, because the water has warmed when the sun was up, and now the water needs to cool before it can become ice again. The cold part also warms more when the sun is down because here, the air warms most near the water. In the warm part of the world, the air warms most further up, close to space, and then the warm goes out to space. We now try to understand if water drops in the sky make the cold part of the world warm faster. When it warms, there are more water drops in the sky instead of bits of ice, and when the sun is down, water drops in the sky warm more than ice does. When we use a computer to find out how the world warms, the computer does not understand well how ice in the sky is different from water in the sky when the sun is down in the cold part of the world. But we sent people there for a year, and they had a box with strong light and other waves that could see the water and ice in the sky. They could also see how water and ice were different. We now also have a box with light and waves that can see ice and water in the sky going around the world in space. This will help us to understand how water and ice in the sky are important for the cold part of the world, and the faster warming of the cold part of the world when then sun is down. Maybe the cold part of the world also warms faster because more warm air and water goes from the warm part of the world to the cold part when the world warms. We use a computer to understand how much warm air goes from the warm part of the world to the cold part, and how much cold air goes back - now and when the world is warmer.
How to cite: Pithan, F.: Why does the cold part of the world with water warm so fast?, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-5663, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-5663, 2026.
In the context of climate change, we typically focus on the impact of individual sectors on the climate. For example, the warming effect of aviation. Far less consideration is given to the inverse relationship, i.e. how a warming climate affects aviation. This talk highlights why the link between a changing atmosphere and future aircraft design deserves greater attention, with a particular focus on the implications of more frequent and intense atmospheric turbulence.
Up-Goer Five version: When we talk about how the world is getting hotter, we usually think about how different parts of our lives make this happen. Such as, how flying makes the world warmer. We think much less about the other way around - how a hotter world changes flying and people-flying-things. This talk is about why we should care more about how a warmer world will cause the people-flying-things to suddenly shake up and down more often with more force. And how this changes what people-flying-things will look like and how they work in a warmed world.
How to cite: Wong, H. L.: How does a warming world change people-flying-things?, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-13837, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-13837, 2026.
The up-area is warming faster than the rest of the large rock we are living on. This is not well understood. It is caused by many things happening near and far from the up-area. We need to better understand how things in the air move from further down into the up-area, and how these things are moved around inside the up-area. With “things” we mean the warmth of the air, the water in the air, and tiny rocks and water drops in the air. It is very important to know how many tiny rocks and water drops are in the air in the up-area, because they can throw back sun light or make the air white if the air can not hold the water anymore. This is important to understand why the up-area is warming faster.
In this work, we try to better figure out how much warmth and water in the air, and how many tiny rocks and water drops in the air move to the up-area and how they are moved around. We can see these things in the air at a few points in the up-area and use a move-with-parts computer picture to follow them back in time to see where they came from.
We focus on short time windows in which a lot of warm and wet air is moved to the up-area, because we know that almost 30% of all air water that is moved to the up-area in a year, is moved there during these short time windows (in the cold time of the year). Many of these warm and wet time windows happen during large air blocking which makes the mean air move direction change from right to up, bringing more warm, wet, and white air into the up-area. These warm and wet time windows also show more tiny rocks and water drops being move to the up-area.
How to cite: Plach, A.: Understanding How Things In The Air Move To The Up-Area, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-12619, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-12619, 2026.
We study second-bad green house air-stuff, that makes the world very warm. It comes from many places: food making, get black under ground burn stuff, water and wet land, burning green stuff that lives, from other stuff from the outside world, and it goes away in air when it meets almost water. We study the up go of second-bad green house air-stuff in the place right down from here, because there is lots of black under ground burn stuff, so lots of up go. People use numbers from places where second-bad green house air-stuff comes from to get up go – we call this bottom up up go - but this is very hard and maybe can be wrong.
We use space eye in the sky and a computer beautiful human to get up go of second-bad green house air-stuff. That we call top down up go. The computer beautiful human follows tiny round things from what space eye in the sky sees to the place of up go. It tells us how much of what space eye in the sky sees changes, when up go changes. With this, we think with numbers and we get up go, so that space eye in the sky says more yes. In the end we see if top down up go is the same or different then bottom up up go and how wrong bottom up up go is. This helps very important people to think of how to make less up go of second-bad green house air-stuff in the place right down from here.
How to cite: Vojta, M.: Top down up go of second-bad green house air-stuff in the place right down from here, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-12833, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-12833, 2026.
I want to explain a thing that happens in cold sky water. By cold sky water I mean the white or sometimes grey things we see above us that make rain or cold, white, hard rain. When it is cold but not very cold, the cold sky water can be made out of wet water or ice. Often the cold sky water is made out of both wet water and ice. The wet water would also like to be ice, because it is cold. But the wet water needs something to begin making it to ice. This something are very small things in the air. But not all small things in the air make wet water into ice. And this works better when it is colder (but not very cold, then wet water can become ice without the small things). When we look at the very small things and ice in the same air that is cold but not very cold, we often see many more ice than small things that make wet water into ice. That seems strange. But we can explain this with a bright idea. What if ice can make more ice without the small things that make wet water into ice. That can happen when ice hits other ice and small ice breaks off but also in other ways. In my up-goer five talk, I want to explain this idea more and talk about how I look into this second way to make ice in cold sky water in the land of the ice.
How to cite: Maherndl, N.: How ice in cold sky water can make more ice and why that's important, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-6390, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-6390, 2026.
The Up-Goer Five challenge frames communication barriers as a problem of language. But just as some people “get” XKCD and others do not, the deeper barrier is not vocabulary itself, but perception. How we write and speak reflects how we see the world, and those perceptions are shaped by exposure and lived experience. This is the deeper issue of climate literacy.
The common failure in science communication is that words appear to be shared but are not. Scientists can assume that meanings travel with words, whereas in practice audiences bring their own meanings. The result is invisible jargon: misunderstandings are created not by unfamiliar terms but by familiar words used in unfamiliar ways. Adapting language to an audience is therefore necessary but insufficient. Effective communication also depends on whether we can see the issue as the audience sees it, and then use words in the way they are normally used and understood within that context. This sounds obvious, which is exactly why it matters.
The problem is not only that audiences do not understand our words, but that they understand them differently. This leads to the familiar frustration of “We used plain language, why didn’t it work?”, and represents the barrier of false familiarity.
In this presentation, we draw on experiences and ongoing discussions within WCRP RIfS (https://www.wcrp-rifs.org) to revisit the concept of climate literacy by explicitly linking words with perception, and show how we are exploring ways to move climate communication toward genuinely shared understanding.
How to cite: Hewitson, B., Bojovic, D., Lam, T., and Maina, J.: Invisible Jargon: When Familiar Words Fail, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-21887, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-21887, 2026.
To know how warm it will be tomorrow, we must first know how warm it is now. But maybe to know how warm it is tomorrow at one place, it is better to know how warm it is now at some other place? But where is the best place to know how warm it is now? We have made a way to guess where the best place is to know about now, to get the best guess for tomorrow. We try out our idea on a very simple game problem, and we find that our idea doesn't work to make the guess for tomorrow better. But it works for the day after tomorrow! This shows that our idea could also be used for real-world problems, telling sky cars where to go so that we know best how warm it will be the day after tomorrow.
How to cite: Griewank, P. and Hartl, H.: Trying out ideas to make our guess how warm it will be tomorrow better , EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-17645, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-17645, 2026.
Our ground ball is warming because it gets more light from the Sun than it sends out to space. Our ground ball is sending out less light now than it did a few years ago, and less than we expected, which is concerning because this means that the ground ball will keep warming for longer.
It is important to understand the light going in and out, and to continue looking at it to see how it changes over time. There are space boxes that look at the light right now, but these boxes will stop looking in a few years, so there are plans for new space boxes that will look later.
We are working on a new space box called the long-time ground-ball-looker ('ECO'). By looking up and down at the same time, this box will help us know how much light is going in and out every year. This will help us understand how quickly our ground ball is warming, and make it easier to figure out when it will stop warming.
How to cite: Hocking, T., Linder, B., Megner, L., and Mauritsen, T.: Long-time ground-ball-looker: A new space box that will help us understand how quickly our ground ball is warming, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-17641, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-17641, 2026.
I am going to talk about how we make stories about change in our lives when we know that cold and hot days, rain and wind will change. The reasons for the changes are in many cases what people do. And the changes will make people's lives worse. We tell people how to plan for that. We have computer pictures of the world that look like real, but are a bit different. We have a lot of them. Then we put them together and see what they show. We also take a very good one, and a very bad one, and see in what they do not agree.
How to cite: Holtanova, E.: How to tell what will come tomorrow with computer pictures of the real world, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-9292, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-9292, 2026.
In fall one and a half years ago, a low air-push area called Boris brought a lot of rain to this land and caused high water going over places. Understanding where the water came from is important for planning for such things in the coming time. Here we followed water with a computer to find out where it started and how it moved through the air. We saw that a lot of water came from the middle water and from the right big land. The part from the middle water was probably so big because of the warm water top at the time. With the help of a second computer we found that if the top of the middle water had been less warm, there would have been less water from there and also less rain in this land. This means that such rain could happen more often with world warming.
How to cite: Duetsch, M.: Starting places of the water causing heavy rain in this land one and a half years ago, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-21943, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-21943, 2026.
Really high up in the sky, high-high,
around the cold time of the year,
a turning body of crazy cold air forms
(a lot colder than on the ground)
and it turns and turns really fast.
The turning body of crazy cold air is strong
but up-going waves can tear it down.
A sudden warming this is called!!
Can be by even 50 warm part numbers or more!
Weird numbers about air-turning this can track
The turning body of crazy cold air...
… and its quick warming and death
After a sudden warming, weird winds reach down to the ground,
so normal left winds change more to the right…
… from time to time
So how does this work, you wonder?
Written on the waves is...
… the answer to a... sudden... warming stoooooory!
How to cite: Pilch Kedzierski, R.: A Sudden Warming Story, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-19531, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-19531, 2026.
