Two Exeter University-Met Office professorships are focusing on extreme climatic and weather events.
Climate change and sustainable futures research projects
- Met Office links
- Big Dilemmas in climate change
- Marine energy research institute
- Turning policy into practice
- Sea life and environmental change
- Conserving threatened species
- Lessons from Climate Past
The University’s academic focus ranges across:
- predicting climate change and its effects on ecosystems and human and animal health;
- developing the technology for mitigating its effects;
- the study of public attitudes and government policy.
Although work is organised as part of the University’s Science Strategy, the input from the social sciences and humanities is crucial. This is particularly true in understanding people’s relationship with the environment and how this might be changed.
Met office link boosts climate change research
The University of Exeter has unprecedented links to the Met Office through three jointly funded professorships, all working to apply advanced mathematical techniques to aspects of the climate change problem.
These posts are supported by a growing number of lectureships, postdoctoral researchers, and PhD students, all working to apply advanced mathematical techniques to aspects of the climate change problem.
In addition to this, the University has recently formed an official strategic research partnership with the Met Office and the Universities of Leeds and Reading.
Find out more about the University's relationship with the Met Office.
Extreme climatic and weather events
Two Exeter University-Met Office professorships are focusing on extreme climatic and weather events.
Professor David Stephenson has a worldwide reputation for applying rigorous statistical techniques to damaging extreme weather events, such as flood-inducing rainstorms or heat waves. These events are especially challenging to analyse because they are, by their very nature, rare within a given observational record.
Professor John Thuburn is an expert in the use of observations to improve weather forecasts. Professor Thuburn is working on techniques which promise to improve weather forecasting generally, and get us closer to the goal of forewarning of extreme events like the Boscastle flood.
For more information on this work visit Exeter Climate Systems and our pages on Extreme Weather research.
Big Dilemmas in climate change
The Big Dilemmas project brings together academics with an enthusiastic student Think Tank to collaboratively work towards solving complex sustainability problems, such as "How can we meet our energy and resource needs without jeopardising the natural environment and future needs?".
Find out more about the Big Dilemmas project.
World class marine energy research institute
A £15 million institute for research into harnessing energy from the sea has been set up by the Universities of Exeter and Plymouth.
The Peninsula Research Institute for Marine Renewable Energy combines the existing research excellence of Exeter in renewable energy and environmental technologies with Plymouth’s expertise in marine science and coastal engineering.
The Research Institute will work alongside the £28 million Wave Hub project, being developed by the RDA off the coast of Cornwall, which will allow wave energy device developers to test their technology on a scale never before possible. Professor George Smith of the School of Geography, Archaeology and Earth Resources, said: ‘Wave energy holds the promise of delivering a significant proportion of the UK’s energy requirements in the future.’
For more information about this research visit the Renewable Energy Research Group pages.
Turning policy into practice
All of the research in the world on climate change is of little use if it doesn’t result in changes to policy and practice. Exeter geographers are concentrating on public and government attitudes to issues such as sustainable energy, air travel and recycling.
Professor Catherine Mitchell is one of the pioneers of research into renewable energy, having begun her work in the 1980s. She has demonstrated that the UK has failed to effectively incorporate sustainable energy at the heart of its energy policy, and is unlikely to do so while policy is shaped entirely by economic considerations.
Dr Stewart Barr has looked at public attitudes to recycling and sustainable lifestyles and found that widespread support exists when local authorities make facilities available. Recycling rates have improved markedly where this happens. However, people who recycle still see no conflict with taking multiple cheap flights each year.
For further information on this research visit the following research group pages:
Sea life and environmental change
The Ecotoxicology and Ecophysiology research group at Exeter focuses on the ecological and physiological impact of environmental change induced by man on aquatic organisms.
Their work spans laboratory studies assessing the interactive effects of chemicals on reproduction, development, homeostatic control and behaviour, through to field studies investigating population level effects.
Specific work on emerging pollutants includes endocrine disrupting chemicals, persistent organics, crude oil, plastics and nanoparticles. It is strongly linked to the development of risk assessment and remediation approaches to environmental problems and we work closely with industry and government agencies in the development and application of predictive approaches to environmental management.
Conserving threatened species
The Conservation and Ecology Group (CEG) undertake field, laboratory and modelling studies to provide new insight into the conservation of threatened species and habitats, and the processes that cause emergent properties of natural systems.
The protection of endangered sea turtles and the preservation of coral reefs are two of the research projects being undertaken by scientists in the Biosciences.
Lessons from climate past
Natural archives of past change provide important insights into the machanisms of the climate system, allowing us to test modelling projections of future variability. At Exeter, we specialise in developing quantified and precisely-dated records of abrupt and extreme change in tropical, temperate and high-latitude environments in both the northern and southern hemispheres, and are working to use this data to constrain the uncertainty in projections for this century. Professor Chris Turney is a world leader in using past climate change to better understand the mechanisms and teleconnections of past and future climate change, and leads the Environmental Change Research Group in the Geography.
Climate system dynamics
Professor Peter Cox focuses on the ‘Climate System’ – how interactions between the physical, chemical and biological components of the planet influence climate change. Of particular concern is the Earth’s carbon cycle which determines how the concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide varies through time. Vegetation and soil contain about three times as much carbon as the atmosphere, and the world’s oceans contain fifty times as much. So relatively small changes in these huge stores of carbon can have a major impact on the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
For more information on this work visit Exeter Climate Systems and the Centre for Geophysical and Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics.
