Research
Climate Systems and Policy
The Climate Systems and Policy research cluster aims to build on research excellence in three areas: physical climate and biogeochemical processes, impacts and adaptation to climate change, and mitigation. Integration between these hubs of expertise, and the School's Biodiversity, Ecosystems and Conservation and Landscape Dynamics research clusters, enables a unique interdisciplinary approach to climate research.
Research in physical climate and biogeochemical processes focuses improving our understanding of fundamental processes in key Earth-system tipping elements and climate change hotspots, including mineral aerosols in the land-surface-atmosphere system, biogeochemical cycling and ecosystem dynamics in tropical forest systems, processes of variability and change in African climate, changes in global and regional hydrological cycles, and climate processes in the Himalaya and Andes.
Research into impacts and adaptation to climate change aims to improve the scientific basis for impacts/adaptation assessment and decision making. This includes evaluation of fitness for purpose of climate model data, climate downscaling, development of novel methods for assessment of impacts of climate change, especially biodiversity and water resources, and adaptation, with a focus on robust decision making and challenges posed by large climate changes.
Attention in mitigation policy and science is on more radical carbon reductions and shorter time scales, with major implications for both energy systems and management of carbon sinks, and on establishing stronger socio-political theoretical understanding of mitigation and governance at a range of scales from Earth-system to local community.
Key research initiatives closely associated with the cluster include several national and international programmes including the Oxford Water Futures Programme, Macronutrient Cycles Programme, UKCIP, the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), Adaptation and Resilience in a Changing Climate (ARCC), Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS), UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium, the Oxford node of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, climateprediction.net, climateeducation.net, and components of major research programmes focused on Africa (e.g. CLIVAR VACS African Climate Atlas) and the Amazon (Pan-Amazonia). Until recently the School hosted the international project office of the Global Environmental Change and Food Security Programme (GECAFS) which closed in 2011.