About Us

VeWA is an interdisciplinary Earth Science project funded by the Hessian Ministry of Higher Education, Research, Science and the Arts through the LOEWE program. It is led by scientists, science educators and exhibition designers from Goethe University Frankfurt, the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center, and the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt.

The abbreviation VeWA stands for ‘Vergangene Warmzeiten als natürliche Analoge unserer ‘hoch CO2‘ Klimazukunft’ (Past warm periods as natural analogues of our ‘high CO2‘ climate future). It is indeed about ‘lessons from the past’, about obtaining information from past geological periods to predict our climate future.

11 research projects focus on the climate and environment of warm periods in the Earth’s deep past. Thereby we do, for example, investigate the temperature distribution on the oceans and on land under high CO2 concentrations, the amount of atmospheric CO2 and investigate the biological responses.
Within the 12th project ‘Science Communication and Outreach’ we carry out various communication formats and create a special exhibition to provide insights into the issues, methods and results of paleoclimate research and climate modeling for the general public. We demonstrate the importance of this research to predict our climate future and initiate a dialogue between science and society.

The VeWA research consortium is part of the ProLOEWE science network, an association of LOEWE research projects.