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Albedo and fire impacts have been identified as Essential Climate Variables, i.e. key to climate monitoring systems and for informing land-use management. UCL research underpinned development of global, long-term satellite albedo and burned area products, which have become de facto standards distributed freely by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The albedo data are used by meteorological agencies such as the UK Met Office, and for climate monitoring by organisations such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The burned area data are used for fire management by government agencies including the US Department of Agriculture and South African National Parks Agency.
Data assimilation is playing an ever increasing role in weather forecasting. Implementing four- dimensional variational data assimilation (4DVAR) is part of the long term strategy of the UK Met Office.
In this case study, an idealised 4DVAR scheme, developed by a team from the Universities of Surrey and Reading working with the UK Met Office, based on the integration of Hamiltonian dynamics and nonlinearity into data assimilation, has now been taken up by the Met Office. It is being used to evaluate options for improving operational 4DVAR. The simplicity of the scheme developed by this team has facilitated careful analyses of some generic problems with the operational model. The outcome includes direct impact on the environment and indirect impact on the economy, both through improvements in weather forecasting.
Research at Newcastle University into stochastic rainfall models and their application has transformed the practice of impact assessment of climate change and risk assessment of environmental hazards across multiple sectors. The Newcastle methods underpin the "Weather Generator", a web-based tool which has been made available since 2009 by DEFRA as part of their official UK Climate Projections (UKCP09). The tool's incorporation into this official data source means that the models generated underpin multi-sectoral risk assessment throughout the UK and subsequently have led to the adoption of stochastic methods in general, particularly in the water and insurance industries to produce more robust risk assessments.
Exeter's Centre for Energy and the Environment has created novel probabilistic weather files for 50 locations across the UK, consisting of hourly weather conditions over a year, which have been used by the construction industry to test resilience of building designs to climate change. They have already had significant economic impact through their use in more than £3bn worth of infrastructure projects, for example, Great Ormond Street Hospital, Leeds Arena, and the Zero Carbon Passivhaus School. The weather files are widely available to professionals and endorsed by internationally leading building simulation software providers such as Integrated Environmental Solutions.
University of Southampton research has been crucial in informing and stimulating worldwide debate on geoengineering — the possible large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system in order to avoid dangerous climate change. Climate modellers at Southampton helped to reveal the potential extent of the fossil fuel "hangover" — the long-term damaging effects expected from anthropogenic CO2 emissions centuries or even millennia after they end. This work led Professor John Shepherd FRS to initiate and chair a Royal Society study, whose 2009 report, Geoengineering the Climate: Science, government and uncertainty, is the global benchmark document on geoengineering strategies, influencing UK and foreign government policy.
Knowledge of the changing global temperature has contributed to an international political agreement being reached about the over-arching objective of climate change mitigation policies. The School's scientists have made a crucial contribution to one of only three datasets that reveal changes to the world's average temperature over the last 150 years. These data have been central to each of the five Assessment Reports of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), upon which successive rounds of international climate change negotiations relied and which led, in 2009, to the adoption of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius as an agreed international policy goal.
Departmental research led to changes in how radiation forces on several classes of space vehicle (low earth orbit environmental measurement satellites and medium earth orbit navigation missions like GPS) are modelled by two NASA laboratories (Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goddard Space Flight Centre). This includes NASA's adoption of a UCL model as an operational standard for Jason-1, which measured global sea level change from 2001 to 2013. Jason-1 measurements are a critical component of data supplied to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, thereby feeding into policy formulation seeking to mitigate the effects of climate change upon the entire population of Earth. The techniques also changed the way in which GPS satellite orbits are calculated, with products used by many millions of users.
A novel approach to climate science has resulted in over 260,000 members of the public worldwide choosing to engage in a climate modelling project. By contributing resources that require their time and attention, they have become `citizen scientists'. The project has resulted in greater interest, understanding and engagement with climate science by participants; wider public discussion of climate science; and influence on policy and practice. Over 3000 people, including professionals in developing countries, have benefitted through education and training. The project has also advanced the development and awareness of `volunteer computing'.
Space weather can adversely affect the performance of many communication and navigation systems. Research into space weather events and their mapping through our Multi-Instrument Data Analysis System (MIDAS) algorithms have highlighted the vulnerability of Global Satellite Navigation Systems (including GPS). The impact of our research has occurred in three main ways. Firstly, it has impacted on the global satellite and communications industry by enabling space-weather effects to be included in a sophisticated commercial GPS simulator. Secondly, it has impacted on UK government [text removed for publication]. Thirdly, it has engaged and informed the public about GPS and space weather.
Research by Professor Leonard Smith and the LSE Centre for the Analysis of Time Series (CATS) on forecasting in non-linear and often chaotic systems, with particular attention to weather, has led to advances in three areas: 1) national and international weather industry products and services that are built upon state-of-the-art research and knowledge, 2) dissemination of state-of-the-art practice in forecast production and verification to national, regional and local weather centres around the world, and 3) the introduction of, and new applications in, state-of-the-art forecasting methods in industries facing high uncertainty and risk, e.g. insurance and energy.