"The idea of this symposium arose out of years of collaboration between meteorologists in Hamburg with Japanese scientists from Tokyo, Osaka, Nagasaki and Fukuoka", said organizer Professor Bernd Leitl from the Institute for Meteorology in explaining the background to the event. The Japanese scientists tend to focus on technical science, whereas the German focus is rather on the natural sciences.

Climate change poses new challenges for the technical sciences. In his talk Professor Kazuyoshi Nishijima spoke of how civil engineers must now plan houses which can cope with future wind loads. Dr. Frauke Feser of the Helmholtz Centre Geesthacht pointed out that such loads cannot yet be precisely predicted using current climate models.

"Civil engineers say to climate researchers: ´Give us the results that you have already today.´ But each new generation of model will mean climate researchers can produce knowledge which could necessitate changes to engineers´ plans." "We want to establish sound and reliable paths of exchanging knowledge."
Further information on the program and additional images can be found at.