Prof Neil Edwards

The exceptionally rich biodiversity of the Amazon region has been intensively studied for over 150 years, yet we still have no comprehensive theory for its origin and maintenance. A successful theory must integrate evolutionary biology and ecology, which set out the genetic basis of adaptation and competition, together with the environmental and climatic drivers of speciation and extinction on multi-million year timescales. Our project will provide a theoretical framework that integrates all these processes, reproducing the spatio-temporal evolution of Amazonian biodiversity through process-driven computational modelling, and dramatically improving our understanding of one of the world's most critical tropical biodiversity hotspots. Biodiversity loss threatens to undermine global health, food resources and carbon cycling, and is proceeding at a dangerously unsustainable rate in the Amazon, one of the world’s most species-rich and ecologically sensitive regions. But a comprehensive, theory-based understanding of how biodiversity is generated and maintained, particularly in tropical ecosystems, is lacking, and a modelling framework built on fundamental processes is urgently needed to support the pursuit of committed biodiversity targets.

he Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation (LC3M) will address one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century: global climate change. Our vision for LC3M is to develop the underlying science for safely removing large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere to cool the planet and mitigate ocean acidification through enhanced rock weathering, a process accelerating rates of atmospheric CO2 removal and nutrient release for plant growth. Ultimately, this project will develop humanity’s capacity for sustainable removal of CO2 from the air through deployment of enhanced weathering on meaningful scales in forests and biofuel croplands, and an understanding of its Earth system feedbacks, ethics and societal impacts. No major RCUK funder has supported a disruptive thinking collaborative venture of this scope and ambition which demands forging links between disciplines and drawing together leading carbon cycle modellers, biologists, soil scientists, and social psychologists and moral philosophers.

* Create a new methodology to assess the cross-sectoral complexity and uncertainty involved in the food-water-energy nexus across scales, for Brazil in a context of global environmental and economic change. * Develop a framework of analysis and policy engagement to effectively inform and support the policy cycle in Brazil to reach objectives of sustainable development in a context of global environmental and economic change. * Develop robust quantitative evidence and novel research tools and methods embedded in highly detailed new generation computational models, which will be made available to researchers in academia, industry, civil society and government, in both the UK and Brazil. * Transfer skills, technology and knowledge to the Brazilian academic and policy community to effectively inform and guide a continued sustainability transition * Engage with the policy process and cycle to determine the role of appropriate policy instruments and how they can be best implemented, to improve resilience of the food-water-energy nexus in Brazil to global environmental and economic change. * Carry out successful demonstration of sustainability projects on the ground in Santa Catarina with key sectoral and regional policy institutions and networks whose activities impact and have influence over the nexus challenges.

The Bank of England has recently drawn attention to the risks to the UK economy posed by the impacts of climate change and climate policy. The risks that extreme climatic events pose to assets and infrastructure have already been the subject of substantial research. However, the risks to financial assets of changes in the policy regime designed to achieve climate targets, notably risks surrounding the impacts of stranded fossil fuel assets (SFFA), have received much less attention. In this project, we propose to study the risk of SFFA shocks to the UK economy, its resilience to such shocks, and the policy options that could improve this resilience. Using in-depth knowledge and expertise on the financial sector, we will develop new tools to determine the risks that SFFA pose for financial stability. We will also further develop our stakeholder engagement methodology, through which we co-develop strategies to assess and understand risk propagation, and policy to minimise the risk of instability. Award value is £250,000 at 80%FEC

The Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation (LC3M) will address one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century: global climate change. Our vision for LC3M is to develop the underlying science for safely removing large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere to cool the planet and mitigate ocean acidification through enhanced rock weathering, a process accelerating rates of atmospheric CO2 removal and nutrient release for plant growth. Ultimately, this project will develop humanity’s capacity for sustainable removal of CO2 from the air through deployment of enhanced weathering on meaningful scales in forests and biofuel croplands, and an understanding of its Earth system feedbacks, ethics and societal impacts. No major RCUK funder has supported a disruptive thinking collaborative venture of this scope and ambition which demands forging links between disciplines and drawing together leading carbon cycle modellers, biologists, soil scientists, and social psychologists and moral philosophers.

The Paris agreement commits nations to pursuing efforts to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees. This represents a level of transformation of the socio-economic and energy systems that substantially exceeds the scenarios that have been found using most conventional integrated assessment models (IAMs) based on equilibrium assumptions. Such strong mitigation also violates the pattern scaling assumptions used to derive environmental impacts in IAMs because of the rapid reversal in emissions growth. We will use a new, fully dynamic IAM that does not rely on equilibrium or pattern scaling assumptions to provide a set of more realistic dynamic pathways to reach the 1.5 degree target. The assessment will identify policy options and the degree of negative emissions required.

The 1.5C programme will achieve a high level of policy impact through publication of results in the IPCC special report SR1.5. But this alone does not necessarily provide answers to the specific questions of UK policymakers. To achieve the programme's full impact potential for UK policy demands an in-depth dialogue between programme participants and stakeholders, together with detailed policy impact and effectiveness modelling to answer the specific questions arising from the dialogue in the light of an integrated view of the new results generated by the 1.5C programme.

The project aim is to build a robust decision-making tool for future investment in new wind turbines, which takes account of climate change scenarios, and government policy scenarios in energy and climate change, as well as the business operations and profitability of the stakeholders. Research questions include: • How is wind power potential in the UK impacted by both uncertain future climate states and policy trajectories? • What strategies for investing in new wind farms would provide the foundation for a more robust strategy under climate change and/or diverse policy outcomes? • What vulnerabilities still remain, and how can they be reduced (e.g. through modelling studies, or monitoring external factors deemed relevant to the decision-making process)?

Core technical support and development for Earth system modelling activity under the Grid-enabled integrated Earth system model (GENIE) project is proposed, in order to allow GENIE to continue as a national resource, and maintain UK competetiveness in ESM activity. In particular the usability and versatility of GENIE for non-expert users will be improved by provision of unified, comprehensive input and graphical analysis routines and documentation, as well as enhancing the flexibility and extensibility of the module structure.

Project Aim: To provide a fully functional prototype of a 'launchpad' application which will facilitate set-up and launch of GENIE model runs and to facilitate its use in Masters-level teaching units at the University of East Anglia and Bristol in the Spring Semester 2009. The version developed for this project will run with a selection of pre-compiled executables of different sub-model selections ('flavours') and with real-time data visualisation.

The project will construct an integrated assessment system for analysing international climate policy in the context of the COP-15 climate negotiations in Copenhagen in late 2009. The assessment system will be based on three existing models of global climate and economic systems: GENIE, TIAM and GEMINI-E3, and will also make use of statistical emulation to provide real- time projections via a web interface. The system will be made available for delegates to analyse the context of the negotiations as they take place. In the following year, the system will be extended to analyse the progress and success of the measures adopted.

The development of interdisciplinary modelling tools and platforms to address the interactions between natural and socio-economic systems is an active research area in Europe. Nevertheless, notable gaps still exist in modelling capabilities, in particular, very little progress has been made to date in the direct coupling of models that resolve the spatial distribution of climate change with sectorally and regionally resolved economic models. Interactive couplings between climate and impact models are relatively underdeveloped. Likewise, the coupling of detailed economic models with impact and adaptation models is still at a relatively early stage. Finally, a coherent assessment of uncertainty is completely lacking in overall integrated assessments. The sustainability of agriculture and land-use policies and practices including water availability and the sustainability of climate policies that rely on high shares of bioenergy are critical applications that demand a spatially resolved representation of global environmental change including feedbacks between natural and socio-economic forces. ERMITAGE proposes to improve and extend existing modular frameworks for the coupling of intermediate complexity models of the natural and socio-economic systems to address the issues cited above. The resulting integrated assessment framework models will be applied to the analysis of post-2012 climate initiatives taking into account uncertainties and regional conflicts of interest in a coordinated way, propagating the analysis of uncertainty from climate simulation through to policy analysis, focusing particularly on the sustainability of agriculture, bioenergy and water resources.

Large parts of the Antarctic ice sheet lie on bedrock below sea level and may be vulnerable to a positive feedback known as Marine Ice Sheet Instability (MISI), a self-sustaining retreat of the grounding line triggered by oceanic or atmospheric changes. There is growing evidence MISI may be underway throughout the Amundsen Sea Embayment (ASE) of West Antarctica. If this is sustained the region could contribute up to 1-2 m to global mean sea level, and if triggered in other areas the potential contribution to sea level on centennial to millennial timescales could be two to three times greater. However, physically plausible projections of Antarctic MISI are challenging: numerical ice sheet models are either too low in spatial resolution to explicitly resolve grounding line processes or else too computationally expensive to assess modeling uncertainties. The proposed work brings together and analyses two new datasets that complement each other in model complexity – a large ensemble generated with a low resolution model, and a small ensemble from a high resolution model – by constructing a new emulator of the relationship between them.

The project will carry out a scoping study of how climate impacts (damages functions) could be better incorporated into advanced macroeconomic models. In particular, the study will consider the diffusion of impacts across: • time • space • sectors resulting from localised impacts in regions that are particularly vulnerable to climate change. The study will consider which local impacts might have greatest global impact and therefore merit most detailed attention in further work.