Bowing
Remote and multihub conference setups have become more popular since the COVID-19 pandemic [Klöwer et al., 2020]. These adaptations, tailored to meet diverse community needs, not only reduce carbon emissions but mitigate fatigue from online participation [Kremser et al., 2024]. These conference formats offer the geosciences community in particular an opportunity to address the effects of its practices on the vital systems it studies.
In December 2023, the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science (IAC) at ETH Zürich organized a full-week virtual add-on hub to AGU’s annual meeting (AGU23) in San Francisco. As members of the hub’s organizing team, we would like to share our experience. Our aim is to provide insights into the challenges encountered during the event and to offer an outlook on how such a model can enrich the toolbox of low-carbon conference practices.
A Hybrid of Watch-Along and Local Sessions
The main component of our virtual hub consisted of watch-along sessions in two rooms at ETH Zürich. An expert in the field introduced the relevance and scope of each streamed session, which participants collectively watched. The expert also moderated questions and discussions in the room. Because of the 9-hour time difference between California and Switzerland, we streamed two parallel sessions starting at 5:30 p.m. in Zürich.
The organizing committee selected sessions to be broadcast, with the intention of covering the interests of all research fields represented at the institute. This committee, consisting of five graduate students and the institute head, heavily relied on requests from institute members.
Before the official meeting started, locally organized workshop and debate sessions on science culture topics proved pivotal to generating strong interest in the hybrid program overall. Metascientific workshops proved particularly beneficial: Participants were divided into subgroups of 6–10 individuals to develop a shared understanding of specific areas of climate system science that are well established, currently growing, or still lacking evidence. These workshops covered topics like “Don’t we already know enough? Missing physical understanding needed for climate change mitigation.”
Especially for early-career researchers, the interactive and engaging format provided instructive, high-level context for the upcoming science sessions.
Especially for early-career researchers, the interactive and engaging format provided instructive, high-level context for the upcoming science sessions. In addition, the format encouraged participation and sparked productive social group dynamics at the beginning of the day’s program, before the streamed AGU sessions.
In the middle of the week, a local, second-use poster session was organized in an open hallway commonly used for social interactions. The low effort of sharing posters that had already been presented elsewhere motivated participants from many fields to enhance and renew exchange within the institute. Together with coffee breaks throughout the week in the same location, the interdisciplinary poster session formed a reference point to which participants repeatedly returned for social gatherings and scientific discussions, complementing the one-way communication offered by streamed sessions.
Throughout the week, the organizing team implemented three evaluation measures. We documented overall registration statistics and session-specific attendance. In addition, we conducted informal interviews to gather participants’ impressions and concerns and provided an open board for written feedback.
Evaluation and Challenges
Overall, 68 individuals registered for the event, with 20–30 people attending local workshops and 5–25 participants joining the streamed sessions, a total representing more than 30% of all scientific IAC members. As encouraged, some people joined spontaneously without registration.
The majority of registered participants were doctoral students (37%), but bachelor’s and master’s students (32%) and postdocs (28%) were also well represented. The number of participating scientists farther along in their careers, however, was low, with only two out of IAC’s 15 professors and senior scientists participating. Regardless, keeping the format open to students was a significant achievement; most likely, they would not have participated otherwise.
Although feedback was generally very positive, we identified some significant challenges along with notable successes.
Some participants, for instance, expressed frustration regarding certain session choices and suggested implementing a voting system shortly before the event. They hoped that voting would foster a sense of belonging and identification with the local design, prioritize the most requested sessions, and, consequently, enhance overall participation. We believe this could be an appealing option for the planned virtual hub to the upcoming AGU24.
Contributing to the issue regarding session choices was the significant time difference between Zürich and the main conference on the U.S. West Coast, which made it difficult to offer a wide range of the program during typical working hours in Switzerland. This not only limited the choice of sessions to stream but also resulted in much higher participation in the afternoon session compared with the evening session, which started at 7:20 p.m. local time.
There was an observable pattern that nonparents tended to stay longer than parents. We speculate that although the hybrid hub mode made it much more logistically feasible for parents to participate at all (because the occasion did not require the financial and time commitments typical of an in-person conference), parents also felt freer to prioritize existing care schedules over conference programs. Encouraging participation of people with care responsibilities remains a challenge beyond the realm of this virtual hub.
Significant success was achieved in reducing travel to the main conference. In multiple conversations, participants mentioned that the virtual hub influenced their decision to forego travel, accepting the trade-offs of less international exchange for convenience or a small contribution to climate justice.
Ultimately, travel-related carbon emissions were similar for IAC members attending AGU22 in Chicago and AGU23 in San Francisco, despite fewer members traveling to AGU23. The longer flight mitigated the reduction in attendance.
The overall annual work-related carbon emissions by IAC members decreased in 2023 compared with 2022, however. We think efforts surrounding the virtual hub helped limit emissions and prevent them from returning to 2019 pre-COVID levels.
Outlook for Future Virtual Hubs
Our goal for this virtual hub project was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions resulting from academic activities in a way that appealed to participants. In addition, we aimed to target advanced students and early-career researchers, hoping they would become advocates for such innovative conference models in the future.
On the basis of our experience, locally organized virtual hubs offer a solution to circumvent carbon-intensive air travel to conferences while maintaining scientific discussion and regional networking. We believe this intermediary option goes beyond compromise, providing benefits in both reducing emissions and enhancing social interaction. For instance, virtual hubs provide an accessible entry point for bachelor’s and master’s degree students, offering them a vibrant scientific conference experience early in their academic careers. Moreover, at the local or regional level, there is ample potential for democratic session choices and conference design.
Though our model addresses caregivers’ needs to some extent, accessibility for these individuals remains a significant challenge.
However, though our model addresses caregivers’ needs to some extent, accessibility for these individuals remains a significant challenge.
This positive experience inspired us to repeat and enhance the format and others to adapt it. A similar virtual hub was organized in March 2024 at IAC in cooperation with the U.S. Climate Variability and Predictability Program (CLIVAR) workshop on Blocking and Extreme Weather in a Changing Climate.
For AGU’s annual meeting in 2024, we are expanding the hub program to the entire department of Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zürich and have invited other Swiss universities. This could make the format even more attractive, especially for senior scientists. We aspire to encourage other institutes and universities to collaborate and broaden virtual add-on hubs, particularly for large, centralized conferences on other continents.
We urge the entire geoscientific community to contemplate and tailor the conference model we’ve presented to meet their community needs and thereby to contribute to a more sustainable international conference scheme in the future.
References
Klöwer, M., et al. (2020), An analysis of ways to decarbonize conference travel after COVID-19, Nature, 583, 356–359, https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02057-2.
Kremser, S., et al. (2024), Decarbonizing conference travel: Testing a multi-hub approach, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 105(1), E21–E31, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-23-0160.1.
Author Information
Felix Jäger (felix.jaeger@env.ethz.ch), Luna Bloin-Wibe, Donghe Zhu, and Heini Wernli, Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland
