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Detailed knowledge about the intra-urban air temperature variability within a city is crucial for the implementation of adaptation strategies to counteract the negative effects of urban heat stress. Various methods to model urban-rural temperature differences exist, but they often only cover certain periods (heatwave, hot day) or meteorological conditions (sunny and calm) due to computational limitations or limited data availability. Here, we present a land use regression approach to model nocturnal air temperature fields for every single night of the summers 2018 to 2020 in a city with complex terrain (Bern, Switzerland). Furthermore, we investigate the applicability of different model structures and straight-forward computable GIS variables to model cold air drainage, which exerts an important influence on the local-scale climate of cities with complex terrain. The geostatistical models are calibrated with in-situ data of a dense low cost air temperature measurement network and high resolution spatiotemporal (land use and meteorology) data, which are all publicly available. The resulting land use regression models are capable to model and map intra-urban air temperature differences with a good model performance (R2: 0.65–0.71; RMSE: 0.69–0.76 K). Evaluations with data from additional measurement stations and periods (summer 2021) show that the models are able to estimate different meteorological and spatial conditions, but that the representation of small-scale topographic features remains difficult. However, the comparatively low computational and financial effort needed to calculate nocturnal air temperature fields at daily basis enable new applications for cities with restricted resources for various areas of interest, such as urban planning (e.g. effect of heat mitigation policies) or heat risk management (e.g. analyze small-scale urban heat vulnerability).

Education is seen as a key leverage point to tackle the unprecedented challenges arising from anthropogenic climate change. Situated within the broader context of education for sustainable development, action-oriented climate change education aims at empowering particularly young people to proactively initiate and implement individual and collective responses addressing the climate crisis. Thus, there exists a need to identify and understand education-related preconditions and strategies that contribute to the development of action competencies among students. Emphasizing local, present, and personally relevant manifestations of climate change is popularly proposed as an effective communication and education strategy to foster motivations for climate change engagement. Despite extensive research on individuals��� cognitive, affective, and behaviour-related responses to reductions of the so-called psychological distance of climate change in social, psychological, and communication sciences, the proposition lacks empirical investigation in educational contexts and among the important cohort of young people. The present thesis aims at addressing this blind spot by exploring the potentials and limitations of proximizing climate change as an action-oriented education strategy from an interdisciplinary and multimethodological perspective. Following the conceptual framework of the model of educational reconstruction, it thereby addresses multiple discipline-specific and cross-disciplinary research gaps and aims related to the fields of urban climatology, environmental and social psychology, as well as climate change education. Taking the perspective of urban climatology, the first goal is to assess summertime urban heat island intensities in Bern, Switzerland at high resolutions using cost-effective measurement devices and geostatistical modelling. The results approve the applicability of a network consisting of 79 low-cost measurement devices for detailed assessments of intra-urban air temperature variability, although intercomparisons with automated weather stations show that daytime observations require careful interpretation due to potential radiation biases. Based on these data, land use regression modelling is shown to be a reliable approach for high-resolution urban heat island mapping during heatwaves using easily accessible geospatial data. Besides allowing for the planning and implementation of adaptation strategies to reduce the risks of intensifying urban heat stress, the fine-scaled analysis of intra-urban air temperature variability provides the science content-related basis for the development of a learning opportunity focussing on proximate impacts of climate change. The second goal consists of examining how young people perceive, judge, and respond to climate change through the lens of environmental and social psychology. On the one hand, results of a questionnaire study among secondary school students in the Canton of Bern (N = 587) suggest that adolescents perceive climate to be a certain and present risk that affects other places and people rather than themselves. Further, regression analysis reveals a significant inverse relationship between perceived psychological distance of and concern about climate change. On the other hand, a survey among young people (N = 4057) in the German-speaking part of Switzerland reveals that participation in the climate strike movement is most strongly linked to social identification with the strikers. Based on the finding that beliefs about the effectiveness of the movement, level of education, and worries about climate change are also associated with participating in the youth strikes, these results suggest that social identity-related processes seem at least as important as risk perceptions for collective climate action among young people. Taken as a whole, these insights uncover important socio-psychological determinants of young people���s engagement with climate change and subsequently allow for a student-centred educational reconstruction of psychologically close manifestations of climate change. The third and ultimate aim is to investigate the suggestion of education about proximate risks of climate change resulting in higher motivations of students for climate change engagement based on an educational intervention manipulating the psychological distance of climate change in the content-related context of urban heat stress and human health (Bern vs. Singapore). The resulting effects of proximized climate change education on cognitive (perceived severity of climate change risks), emotional (worry about climate change), and behaviour-related responses (behavioural intentions for climate action) of adolescents are compared across a psychologically close setting (N = 162), a psychologically distant setting (N = 169), and a neutral control group (N = 217). Although the results show a significant effect of the close treatment resulting in an increase of all outcome variables, its interaction with gender reveals a reactance effect among male participants, which is reflected in a decrease in level of worries and behavioural intentions. In sum, the findings suggest that the imperative of proximized climate change education leading to higher motivations to act on the issue is not straightforward as often assumed due to interactions with individual characteristics. In conclusion, this thesis makes not only an important contribution to the understanding and empirically supported development of action-oriented climate change education strategies, but also to a deeper comprehension of how young people view, conceptualize, feel about, and act on the perhaps greatest challenge of this century. Complemented by profound insights into cost-effective approaches to assess the exposure of urban populations to heat-related risks, this thesis provides an example of how multiple research perspectives may contribute to the whole becoming greater than the sum of its parts.

Since late 2018, young people around the world have united to demand greater action on climate change. Aside from their stated concerns and demands, however, very little is known about why young people have been joining this growing movement. Using a large sample (N = 4057) of people in Switzerland aged between 14 and 25, we show that social identity is most strongly associated with participation, followed by beliefs about the effectiveness of youth strikes, level of education, and worry about climate change. Our findings affirm the relevance of both climate change risk perceptions and social identity-related processes for collective climate change action, and pave the way for promising opportunities in theory development and integration. The study also provides lessons for those who seek to maintain and increase collective action on climate change: concern about climate change is an important motivating factor, but social identity processes are at least as relevant for young people&rsquo, s participation.

Die Stadtgeographie ist klassischerweise eine Thematik, welche vorwiegend den sozial- und wirtschaftsgeographischen Forschungszweigen zugerechnet wird (vgl. GeoAgenda No. 1/2020). Daran anknüpfend möchten wir aufzeigen, dass urbane Gebiete auch für die physische Geographie von hohem Interesse sind. Mit dem Projekt «Urban Climate Bern» greift die Gruppe für Klimatologie des Geographischen Instituts der Universität Bern (GIUB) ein Thema auf, welches bereits in den 1970er-Jahren intensiv beforscht wurde. Der folgende Beitrag widmet sich daher einer kleinen Zeitreise in die vergangene, aktuelle und zukünftige klimatologische Stadtforschung an der Universität Bern.

The understanding of intra-urban temperature variations is crucial for cities’ adaptation to impacts of present and future anthropogenic climate change. Depending on extensive measurement networks, high-resolution air temperature measurements in urban environments are challenging due to high instrumentation and maintenance costs. Here, we present a low-cost measurement device (LCD) consisting of a temperature logger and a custom made, naturally ventilated radiation shield. Besides inter-comparisons with automated weather stations (AWS) at three reference sites during record-dry summer 2018, we tested the potential using a network of 76 LCD to map the intra-urban variability of urban heat island (UHI) patterns throughout an intense heat wave based in the city of Bern, Switzerland. We found positive mean measurement biases between LCD and AWS of 0.61 to 0.93 K (RMSE: 0.78 to 1.17 K) during daytime, of which up to 82.8% could be explained by radiative heating of solar irradiance and insufficient ventilation by prevailing winds. During night, average measurement biases were markedly lower and eventually negative with -0.12 to 0.23 K (RMSE: 0.19 to 0.34 K). Our results further highlight the importance of sensor inter-comparisons being conducted at multiple locations with differing urban forms given that biases varied considerably between the reference sites. Data retrieved by the city-wide measurement network showed that the LCD approach is well suited for the analysis of spatiotemporal UHI-patterns during night with maximum UHI intensities of up to 5.5 K. In conclusion, the here presented LCD measurement approach represents a valuable option for cost-effective analyses of urban air temperature variability across multiple scales, which may be of particular value for the development, appliance, and monitoring of adaptation strategies to climate change in cities with restricted financial resources.

Die Informationen für Lehrpersonen enthalten Erläuterungen zum Konzept der Lerngelegenheit "Klimawandel und Klimapolitik", Anregungen zur Umsetzung sowie Lösungsvorschläge zu den Lernaufgaben.

Die Lerngelegenheit zu Klimawandel und Klimapolitik für die Sekundarstufe II wurde auf der Grundlage neuster fachwissenschaftlicher und fachdidaktischer Studien entwickelt und in der Praxis erprobt.