Earlier this week, On the Job featured a recap of the APECS Cryosphere Careers panel that took place  at the 2016 AGU Fall Meeting. Today, we feature another group that presented at Fall Meeting.  Representatives from the Young Earth System Scientists (YESS) community gave a presentation in the AGU Career Resource Theater to share with early career AGU attendees background on YESS and how they can get involved. More information is provided here for those who could not attend the Fall Meeting session.

The Young Earth System Scientists (YESS) community brings together young researchers from a range of scientific backgrounds, including both natural and social sciences. YESS unifies early career researchers in an influential network giving them a collective voice and leverage, while supporting career development.

Over the past year YESS has been extremely active in many ways. The community has grown extensively across the globe and carried out its first elections for Regional Representatives and the Executive Committee. YESS recently published a white paper in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS), outlining our vision of the future of Earth System Science, focused on four ‘Frontiers’: seamless Earth system prediction, communication, user-driven science, and interdisciplinarity. The paper also identifies what is required to tackle these major scientific challenges from an early career researcher perspective. YESS closely collaborates with the core research programs of the World Meteorological Organizsation (WMO): the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) and the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW). The Argentinian National Weather Service (SMN) is officially supporting YESS through the establishment of a part-time YESS Officer position to assist in the running of YESS.

Periodic webinars have been offered by YESS, where expert researchers share their knowledge of particular Earth system science topics. Furthermore, YESS also coordinates Council Webinars, where Council members present their own science to promote exchange within the community. YESS was also present at several international conferences and research institutions around the world, organizing side events for early career scientists. For example, YESS helped to organize the Early Career Scientists Symposium at the CLIVAR Open Science Conference, held in China, in September 2016.

Currently a small international group of YESS members is investigating how to get more Early Career Researchers involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) process, to be published in a scientific journal. As a first phase of the research, the group has developed a survey which aims to gain improved understanding on how early career scientists can play a role in the IPCC. If you are reading this and you are an early career scientist (students and researchers within ~5 years after their latest degree), we kindly invite you to answer the survey (8-10 minutes). It is a great opportunity to let your voice be heard and to get more young researchers involved in the IPCC in the future. Thank you very much in advance and please feel free to circulate the survey in your networks where relevant.

If you are a Masters or PhD student, or you are a postdoc within ~5 years of your PhD and are interested in joining the YESS community, email us at [email protected].

To learn more about YESS, follow us on our homepage, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Kevin Reed, Stony Brook University, New York, USA. Carla Gulizia, Centro de Investigaciones del mar y la atmosphera (CIMA), Buenos Aires, Argentina. Gaby Langendijk, World Climate Research Programme, Geneva, Switzerland & The YESS Outreach Working group.