“For the moment it seems that we are not able to reach the goals we have set to tackle climate change, probably because humans are not suffering enough yet”

After receiving the 16th BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change, Jakob Schwander describes the technical advances that have made it possible to drill and study increasingly deep ice cores. Through these techniques, science has been able to reconstruct the history of the climate with unprecedented precision. Schwander highlights the value of engineering and international collaboration in addressing climate challenges.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change has gone in this sixteenth edition to Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Jean Jouzel, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Jakob Schwander and Thomas F. Stocker “for contributions to the polar ice core records that establish a fundamental coupling between greenhouse gases and air temperature characterizing climate change over the past 800,000 years”.