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Hi Aubrey

I read your message and it seems logical to me. As a climate scientist I can agree confidently about the need for contraction, and urgently. Speaking as a member of the human race convergences seems morally appropriate. However I am not so experienced to comment on the political processes and the best way to move things forward as quickly as is necessary. But I am happy to sign this.

Dr Jo House
Research Fellow
Climate & Envrionmental Change Group
University of Bristol
BRISTOL BS8 1RJ
United Kingdom

The Climate and Environmental Change group blends fundamental and applied science including expertise in palaeoclimate, biogeochemistry and ecosystem change as well as science communication.

The research interests of the group range from local observations to global biogeochemical cycles. Examples include

  1. the study of methane emissions and consumption in mineral and peat soils;
  2. the response of soil organic carbon to climate warming
  3. the cycling of particle reactive elements in the ocean, as a means to reconstruct past changes in ocean circulation
  4. global sources and sinks of carbon dioxide in the terrestrial and marine biosphere.
  5. global nitrogen budgets and related biogeochemical processes

Approaches involve a combination of observational, experimental and modelling techniques, as well as data assimilation methods. A particular strength of the group is the range of time scales considered, which vary from 100 million year scales to the seasonal. This interaction of time scales captures the true diversity of climate and environmental change right up to and including human interaction with the environment.

Personnel

Staff

Postdocs/Research Assistants

PhD students

Distinct interests within the group

Climate Change (past and ongoing)

Ecosystems Change

Biogeochemical Cycles

Ongoing Research Projects

med flats

Tidal mudflats at Portishead, near Bristoll

PALSEA – a working group attempting to better understand sea-level and ice sheet change using paleo-archives of sea level and ice-sheet change.

PAST4FUTURE – an EU-wide FP7 project using information from past interglacials to learn about future climate change:

IMECC - EC FP6 infrastructure activity for determining the carbon balance of Europe:

NCEO – NERC’s National Centre for Earth Observation, a partnership of scientists and institutions using data from Earth observation satellites to monitor global and regional changes in the environment and to improve understanding of the Earth

COMBINE – EC FP7 project to advance Earth system models (ESMs) for more accurate climate projections and for reduced uncertainty in the prediction of climate and climate change in the next decades

CCMAP – Climate Carbon Cycle Modelling Assimilation and Prediction. This is a QUEST project with Eleanor Blyth of CEH Wallingford as PI. Members of the group are involved as subcontractors of CEH working on: constraining the carbon-cycle climate feedback through data assimilation, and building a prototype data assimilation system for an Earth system model.

Real-time high resolution visualization of methane emissions from wetlands using multi-spectral infrared imaging - NERC Small Grant.

‘Biophysical drivers of methane ebullition in northern peatlands - NERC UKPopNet

The Fate of Methanotrophically Fixed Carbon in Terrestrial Environments - NERC Standard Grant

Chemosynthetically-driven Ecosystems South of the Polar Front: Biogeography and Ecology’ NERC Consortium Grant

QUATERMASS – This is  a QUEST project on the scope and implications of biospheric mitigation of climate change (e.g. avoided deforestation, afforestation, bioenergy).  Led by Jeremy Woods at Imperial College it is managed by Jo House.

QUEST-GSI Global Scale Impacts projects looking at impacts of climate change on various human services, lead by Prof Arnell at the Walker Institute, with researchers from this group looking at impacts on forestry and biodiversity.

Climate Change and UK Upland Soil Carbon, joint project between QUEST and the Environment Agency:

Climate Prediction for Robust Policy Making, work funded within the QUEST core team, in collaboration with Department of Energy and Climate Change and the UK Met Office, on emissions profiles, stabilization profiles and the implications of uncertainty in the carbon cycle feedbacks and in land use change emissions:

Valuing rainforests as Global Eco-utilities: a novel mechanism to pay communities for regional scale tropical forest ecosystem services provided by the Amazon’. Funded by ESPA (NERC-ESRC-DfID):

CONVERGE (Rethinking Globablisation in the light of Contraction and CONVERGEnce) - an EC FP7 project applying systems analysis and sustainability indicators at the global scale, extending the well-known concept of contraction and convergence of greenhouse gas emissions to other contexts

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