Marking project progress: Highlights from the first Past to Future General Assembly

Utrecht University hosted the first General Assembly of the EU-funded Past to Future (P2F) project from 5-7 November 2025, bringing together more than 80 researchers from across Europe and beyond. The meeting advanced collaborative research on how data from Earth’s past can improve climate models and inform future decisions on adaptation and resilience.

Understanding how the climate system responded to past changes helps researchers refine future projections. P2F combines paleoclimate data with advanced Earth System Models to identify tipping points and abrupt shifts—critical knowledge for policymakers, planners, and sectors managing climate risk.

Key takeaways

  • A shared vision for model-data integration: Researchers agreed on practical approaches to align evidence from ocean, ice, and land archives and climate models. This foundation will improve confidence in projections used for long-term planning.
  • Cross-disciplinary insights: Talks highlighted advances in pollen-based land-cover reconstructions, archaeological big data for human-environment interactions, and new techniques for detecting abrupt climate shifts. New conversations across disciplines will enable richer interdisciplinary findings as collaborations deepen throughout the project.

Spotlight on early career researchers

Ahead of the General Assembly, P2F early-career scientists joined peers from the Dutch EMBRACER programme for a two-day symposium. The event featured flash talks, poster sessions, and workshops on mental health and public engagement, plus a keynote on dating tools in palaeoclimatology. The symposium fostered collaboration across oceanography, cryosphere science, archaeology, and data science—skills essential for translating past climate insights into actionable guidance.

Looking ahead

In 2026, P2F will release its first integrated data portal and host a major synthesis workshop at EGU. These efforts aim to deliver more reliable, policy-relevant climate information grounded in how the Earth system has behaved in the past.

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