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The United Kingdom is today better adapted to climate risks as a result of a sustained programme of research completed by the School into the impacts of climate change on ecological, social and infrastructural systems. This work has had significant and continuing impact on the design and implementation of UK (and international) climate adaptation strategies and policies, especially with regard to flooding, the built environment and water and coastal management. Decision-support tools (such as climate scenarios and options appraisal) and direct policy advice produced by the School have been used by numerous public and private sector organisations to inform and guide their adaptation strategies and investments.
As the realities of climate change have become more widely accepted over the last decade, decision makers have requested projections of future changes and impacts. Founded in 2002, the Centre for Analysis of Time Series (CATS) has conducted research revealing how the limited fidelity of climate models reduces the relevance of cost-benefit style management in this context: actions based on ill-founded projections (including probabilistic projections) can lead to maladaptation and poor policy choice. CATS' conclusions were noted in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and led in turn to the toning down of the UK Climate Projections 2009 and the 2012 UK Climate Change Risk Assessment. Members of the insurance sector, energy sector, national security agencies, scientific bodies and governments have modified their approaches to climate risk management as a direct result of understanding CATS' research. Attempts to reinterpret climate model output and design computer experiments for more effective decision support have also resulted.
Hope's research in developing the PAGE2002 model of climate change has been used extensively by government agencies in the UK and US, as well as the IMF and the international community in order to improve their calculations for global carbon emissions and setting carbon emissions targets. The model was used in the UK government's Eliasch Review, in order to calculate the costs and benefits of actions to reduce global deforestation; by the US Environmental Protection Agency, in order to calculate the marginal impact of one tonne of CO2 emissions; and the IMF, whose calculations using the PAGE2002 model form the basis for their guidance on carbon pricing.
The US government's announcement of an increase in the `social cost of carbon' (SCC) from $24 to $38 a tonne has been made on the basis of research by Richard Tol, of the University of Sussex. Regulation based on the new SCC (a measure of the damage of releasing an additional tonne of carbon into the atmosphere) initially applies to microwave ovens, where it is anticipated to save US consumers billions on their energy bills over coming decades and prevent 38 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. From June 2013, the new SCC applies to any new or revised regulation by any branch of the US government and will eventually affect a wide range of products and investments, including cars, white goods and power plants.
Tol, who works as an adviser to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has been instrumental in helping the agency to understand the economic impacts of climate change and the methods and assumptions that underpin SCC estimates. The US government's estimates of the SCC are widely used by other decision-makers in the private sector, banks and NGOs and in other countries.
The research has had significant impact on the design and implementation of public-private partnerships at the international level (theme 1). It has led to new professional groups within the finance sector (theme 2). In particular research has directly influenced the investments of the International Climate Fund (£2.9 billion) set up by the UK Government; the Little Rock Accord signed in December 2012, with the Club de Madrid group of former world leaders; credit rating analysis of energy and water utilities by Standard & Poor's; and a new Board in the UK Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. Collectively these groups influence substantial capital flows into climate and resource solutions globally.
UK upland peatlands constitute the world's greatest area of blanket bog, an endangered biome, and are the UK's largest natural habitat, carbon store, and pure water resource. The multi-institutional project "Climate Change Impacts on UK Upland Soils" identified models to predict the response of blanket bog to climatic and environmental changes and drew the attention of diverse stakeholders to the challenge of conserving these peatlands in a warming climate. The results have had impact on public policy and the environment by stimulating and informing debate. Since 2011, they have been (i) used by local and national agencies such as the Forestry Commission, (ii) included in the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment, (iii) cited by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Commission of Enquiry on Peatlands, and (iv) used in evidence for policy making by Defra and the Scottish Parliament.
Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time. The net costs of climate change in the UK could be tens of billions of pounds per year in the 2050s, and tidal flooding alone could affect over half a million UK properties by 2100. Dr Jonathan Rougier worked with the UK Met Office (UKMO) to produce the climate scenarios for the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) 2009 report (UKCP09). His research and advice (funded as a UKMO External Expert) was critical in a key innovation in the UKCP09: a comprehensive uncertainty assessment. A Director of the UKCIP writes "The UKMO team with Dr Rougier [have] put the UK at the leading edge of the science and service aspects of providing climate information for users" [b].
The UKCP09 formed the basis of the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment and the recommendations of the UK National Adaptation Programme, which was submitted to Parliament as part of the Government's obligations under the Climate Change Act. The UKCP09 has been used for the assessment of the impact of climate change by hundreds of organisations, including agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), utilities companies, consultancies, and County Councils and Local Authorities.
A comparative methodology to assess the impact of climate change in different countries, implemented by Gosling for a report commissioned by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), informed EU negotiations at the 2011 UN climate change conference in Durban, South Africa. The conference concluded with the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action - a `road map' by which global legal agreement on climate change is to be implemented no later than 2015. For the first time, government ministers and their advisers attending an international conference were able to compare the impact of climate change in different countries, including those where scientific institutions have limited research capacity.
Lived experiences of ordinary people and how they rationalise events provides rich insights for several disciplines e.g. medicine. With climate change, whilst the value of anthropogenic activity is increasingly recognised, models based on positivist scientific rationality still dominate. What is yet unclear is how a global citizenery understands climate change through its own individual and group "lived experiences". This research is significant in that it seeks to conceptualise and theorise what is meant by the "lived experience" of climate change and how this shapes the "lay rationality" and actions of people in both the developed and the developing world.
Significant climate change is forecast for the Middle East by the end of this century, leading to — amongst other things — greater water scarcity and falling agricultural productivity. LSE research resulted in the development of the Palestinian Authority's first climate change adaptation strategy. This in turn led to the creation of a Palestinian national committee on climate change and, with the implementation of specific recommendations from this research, the strengthening of climate change planning within the Palestinian Authority. The research also shifted regional priorities for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which subsequently included climate change in its 2011-2013 Strategic Framework as a policy priority for development work in the occupied Palestinian territory.