The Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project (PMIP) celebrated its 30th anniversary online with a special 30-hour-long round-the-world marathon across time zones from December 2 to 3 2021. Prof. ZHOU Tianjun and Dr. ZHENG Weipeng from the State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (LASG), Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Prof. LIU Jian from Nanjing Normal University co-convened the monsoon session in this conference.

The 30th Anniversary online conference was well supported by the whole PMIP community. It consisted of plenty of one-two-hour-long sessions on a wide range of topics, including PMIP databases, Last two millennia climate, WCRP-PAGES webinar, PMIP and high-CO2 worlds, Isotopes, Monsoons, Holocene transients, Climate sensitivity and PMIP’s future directions, etc. Around 500 people from the worldwide paleoclimate groups attended the celebration marathon. The PMIP history were reviewed, precious old photos and videos were shared, and over 50 impressive talks were presented.

The monsoon session consisted of six presentations on paleo-monsoon studies, covering a broad range of time periods from Cretaceous, Eocene, Pliocene, Holocene, Last Millennium to present day and future projection. The participants also discussed the potential directions of future research. LASG young members played an active part in the session. Dr. MAN Wenmin gave a talk about the volcanic impacts on global monsoon changes. Dr. SUN Yong and ZUO Meng contributed to the event by organizing the monsoon session. And more than thirty postgraduates attended the meeting online.

The conference provided a wonderful and timely opportunity to exchange latest findings in paleoclimate studies and promoted further in-depth collaboration among PMIP reconstruction and modeling communities.

Established in 1991, the PMIP has provided an efficient mechanism for coordinating paleoclimate modelling activities. The key aims of the project are to understand the mechanisms of climate change, identify the different climatic factors that shape our environment and evaluate the capability of state-of-the-art models to reproduce different climates.

For more information about PMIP 30th anniversary, please visit https://premc.org/pmip30years/.