Peter Dorward
In May 2017 the Guyana government together with the Caribbean Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology facilitated a workshop one developing Participatory Integrated Climate Services of Agriculture (PICSA). The training enabled farmers to make informed decisions based on accurate, location specific, climate and weather information; locally relevant crop, livestock and livelihood options, and with the use of participatory tools, aid their decision making.
by Dr Andrew Ainslie, Lecturer in International Rural Development
I am part of a team led by the Walker Institute conducting research in the Lake Victoria Basin, as part of the Future Climate for Africa programme. I recently returned from two and a half weeks in Uganda, where I studied the governance of land in the districts bordering Lake Victoria. Some uncertainty surrounds just what impacts shifts in the climate will have in this region, but what is far more certain is that millions more people are destined to migrate into the Basin over the coming decades, augmenting the natural increase in population, and placing the natural and social resources in the region under increasing strain.
It isn’t just polar bears being affected by climate change – people all over the world are already being negatively affected by changes to the climate, from droughts, flooding, and ruined harvests. That’s not fair. Particularly as these communities had no role in making the problem in the first place. Fast forward a few years, and the environmental situation for our children’s children is not looking too peachy either… but could it look green?
If we changed the way we thought about climate change instead of it being ‘just a problem for science to solve’ to a problem about social justice, could we come up with a solution that addresses injustice that would help these communities and climate change at the same time? Can fairness create a green future?
As part of the ESRC Social Science Festival, the Climate Justice Scholars from the University of Reading will be hosting an afternoon exploring different climate justice topics through presentation-slams, interactive posters and challenges.
To top it all off, there will be a screening of the thought-provoking film ‘Greedy Lying Bastards’ – which exposes the deceit of the fossil fuel industries affecting vulnerable people – followed by an audience discussion chaired by university academics.
The event is free, and drinks & snacks will be provided to fuel the fun and debate!
Representatives from Climate-KIC are visiting the University of Reading on Friday 17th March. The University is a partner of Climate-KIC, which is the EU’s main climate innovation initiative. You are invited to meet them and learn more about the plans for Climate-KIC. The visit will have three components:
11.00-12.00 – Alina Congreve, Climate-KIC UK Education Lead
Alina would like to meet with the Directors of the Masters courses that were awarded the Climate-KIC label a few years ago. Directors of T&L, as well as Deans of T&L, are also very welcome to attend should they wish. Masters courses that have been awarded with the Climate-KIC label are: Applied Meteorology; Climate change and Development; Design & Management of Sustainable Built Environments; Entrepreneurship & Management; Environmental Management; Environment and Development; International Energy Studies; International Management; Public Policy and Renewable Energy: Technology and Sustainability
12.30-13.00 – Jason Louis Gouveia, Climate-KIC UK Innovation Programme Coordinator
Jason will give an overview of Climate-KIC and the opportunities it presents. More information about the themes of the Climate-KIC is available here: http://www.climate-kic.org/themes/.
13.00-15.00 – One-to-one meetings
Alina and Jason will both be available to discuss particular aspects of the Climate-KIC and its opportunities. Depending on the level of interest, meeting times will be allocated in 15 minute slots. Please email Daniel Williamson (d.williamson@reading.ac.uk) to register your interest.
About Climate-KIC
Climate-KIC is one of three Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) created in 2010 by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), an EU body whose mission is to create sustainable growth. The Climate-KIC supports this mission by addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation. It integrates education, entrepreneurship and innovation resulting in connected, creative transformation of knowledge and ideas into economically viable products or services that help to mitigate climate change.
If you’d like to attend any part of the Climate-KIC visit, please email Daniel Williamson to register your interest d.williamson@reading.ac.uk
For more specific questions about the Climate-KIC and topics that will be covered during the visit, please contact Maria Noguer m.noguer@reading.ac.uk
What happens to the Earth when the Sun’s activity hits a 300-year low, as is predicted in the next few decades?
Research published this morning in Scientific Reports by Dr Mathew Owens and Professor Mike Lockwood has the answer. And if you enjoy the occasional visit of the beautiful Northern Lights to latitudes as low as Britain, then sorry – it’s bad news.
Matt Owens talked about the research in this 1-minute video:
By Paul Williams, University of Reading Department of Meteorology
‘As important as political leadership is, individual people and companies will have to make key decisions to deal with the impacts of climate change’
Climate change is never far from the news headlines – but often it’s not because of the science.
As much as I think that complicated mathematical calculations about the circulation of air and water around the globe should make people stop in wonder, I fear my beliefs are not widely shared by most other people.
And they would have a point. Most people don’t talk maths over the water cooler or when down the pub, beyond adding up the cost of their drinks.
So if it’s not the science, what makes climate change so appealing to journalists? Often, it’s the politics.
News media love to observe a good old-fashioned fight, and politics is the arena where disagreements get aired every day. Not only that, but politics tends to have a bearing on how we live our lives, too.
So while the basic facts of human-caused climate change are agreed by just about all scientists working in the field, a handful of doubting politicians often hog the headlines.
Clouds could be given a helpful jolt of electric charge to increase much-needed rainfall in dry parts of the world, thanks to an award-winning research proposal by scientists at the University of Reading.
The new study will investigate how charge modifies the growth of tiny water droplets into larger drops that fall as rain. It will use a supercomputer to simulate the cloud processes in detail, with specially developed robotic aircraft to sample and charge the clouds.
The Reading team was one of three groups awarded funding in this year’s US $5-million-dollar United Arab Emirates (UAE) Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science, at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday 17 January. Reading will receive US $1.5m.
The story has been given wide coverage in the region’s media. Read news story in ‘The National‘
Professor Giles Harrison is interviewed at the ceremony in Abu Dhabi
Giles Harrison, Professor of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Reading, said: “Our project is about changing the balance of charges on the tiniest cloud droplets, a neglected aspect of clouds which could revolutionise our ability to manipulate rainfall in areas that need it most.
“The UAE’s programme is ambitious and imaginative, and has already brought many international scientists together on this important topic.”
READ MORE on our News website >
The new research proposal was based on a study published in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society in May 2015.
On world food day Professor Richard Tiffin from the University’s Centre for Food Security discusses the challenges faced when meeting the global demand for food.
The present debate around how best to meet the global demand for food has a tendency to polarise into two camps. First there are those who argue that the food system is broken and what is required is a return to more ‘traditional’ ways in which food is produced on labour intensive small farms and distributed locally. In the opposite corner are technologists who argue that the only way that we will be able to meet the predicted increase in demand for food of between fifty and one hundred per cent, is to continue the process of intensification that characterised the development of agriculture during the twentieth century. Instead of this polarisation however perhaps some cross fertilisation is necessary.
A return to a more traditional agriculture has some appeal. There is no denying that small scale production gives a better looking countryside and increased rural employment. Its diversified products also provide a nice contrast to the commoditised food products that dominate the supermarket shelves. In a more subtle way the greater diversity of the farming system employed on these units may provide us with a greater degree of resilience in the face of increased risk of extreme weather events which climate change brings.
This is all logical but the problems arise when attempts are made to scale the approach up to meet a much larger part of our food needs. Increased labour intensity demands more labour and we have to ask where this will come from. ‘New-lifers’ can only go so far, farms will need to reverse the reality of the labour market in which non-agricultural jobs have better conditions and therefore draw people out of the sector. It is sometimes overlooked that farm employment is often dangerous, cold, wet, depressing and poorly paid.
The argument becomes much more dangerous, however, when we apply it to developing countries. Here the small scale sector is often vital in ensuring short term food security, but to argue that it should remain so risks consigning these countries to a permanently less developed state. The process of agricultural intensification must be seen as one component of the process of economic development. Blocking agricultural development will stop the release of labour (and other resources) from agriculture which drives growth in other sectors of the economy. Without this, growing populations may or may not have enough food, but they will be without the services that are necessary to support their inevitably more urban lifestyles.
So, we are left with a situation in which ‘intensification’ must continue, but we must also learn from the practitioners of ‘traditional’ agriculture. These farmers are acutely aware of the fact that food production is not an industrial process. Food is, at least in part, a product of nature. This is a fact that seems not have escaped the food consumer, where all the evidence points to the fact that ‘natural’ food is valued. The implication is that we cannot divorce our food production from the ecosystem which supports it. Changes in our farming system have implications for the other things which our ecosystem gives us, for example biodiversity and carbon cycling. Equally changes in the ecosystem, for example reductions in the population of pollinators, have implications for food production.
There are some encouraging signs that a middle way may become our focus.
The concept of sustainable intensification is on the agenda. This recognises that we must not stop the search for new ways of producing food but that we should do so in ways which work with nature rather than in a box apart from it. We should learn from our traditions but not harp back to them. By 2050 there will be 2bn more people in the world, 1.9bn of whom will be in developing countries. We owe it to them.
Professor Richard Tiffin is Director for the Centre for Food Security at the University of Reading. Richard is an Agricultural Economist and his current research is focused on diet and health policy, in particular the impacts of fiscal policies with the objective of improving dietary health, such as so-called ‘fat tax’.
Dr Nicholas Klingaman from the Walker Institute for Climate System Research at the University of Reading is an expert in Queensland’s weather and climate. He is funded by the state’s government to investigate the causes of floods and droughts and the impacts of climate change on rainfall.
The state of Queensland, in northeast Australia, experiences considerable year-to-year and decade-to-decade variations in its rainfall. During 2000-2005, Queensland received only 84% of its long-term average rain. All of the last six years (2006-2011) have seen above-normal precipitation, however, at 133% of the average rainfall. 2011 was the second-wettest year since 1900 – only 1974 was wetter – with severe flooding in southeast and central Queensland, including in Brisbane. Oscillating periods of flood or drought are common: all years but one in 1947-1955 were wetter than normal, while all but two years in 1956-1969 had below-average rain. These variations in rainfall have dangerous consequences for the state’s agriculture, water resources and infrastructure.
For each year, the red bars show the percentage difference between the Queensland rainfall for that year and the long-term (1900-2011) average. Values larger than zero indicate wetter-than-normal seasons; negative values are drier-than-normal seasons. The black line shows an 11-year running average of the red bars, to indicate decade-to-decade variations in rainfall.
Understanding the climate phenomena that drive variations in rainfall would improve scientists’ ability to predict swings between drought and flood. A three-year project between the Walker Institute for Climate System Research and the Queensland Climate Change Centre of Excellence has investigated these climate drivers of rainfall, including the possible impacts of climate change.Our research has found that in summer (December-February), winter (June-August) and spring (September-November), El Nino and La Nina cause state-wide variations in rainfall. ‘El Nino’ refers to abnormally warm tropical Pacific Ocean temperatures; during ‘La Nina’ these waters are colder than normal. Events typically last for 10-12 months.
Heating or cooling the Pacific redistributes tropical precipitation: Queensland receives less rainfall during El Nino and more in La Nina. We have found that while stronger La Nina events lead to heavier rainfall, the drying during El Nino has no relationship to the El Nino’s magnitude.
The intense La Nina event of 2010-2011 brought severe rains to the entire state. While the strength of the connection between Queensland’s rainfall and El Nino and La Nina has varied since 1900, there is no long-term trend and hence no evidence that climate change is influencing this relationship.
Within Queensland, our analysis found that the heavily populated southeast corner – including Brisbane – and the tropical Cape York peninsula are regions of high rainfall variability. Southeast Queensland rainfall is influenced by the prevailing winds: east-to-west winds bring moist air from the ocean, promoting intense rainfall; west-to-east winds pull in hot, dry air from the continent. Rainfall in Cape York is concentrated in summer; the peninsula is dry the rest of the year. Summer rainfall is closely linked to the number of tropical cyclones that pass through or near the area.
The climate models used for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show little consensus on how Queensland’s rainfall will change in a warmer world. A survey of 22 models showed that by 2100, Queensland may be up to 40% wetter or 40% drier than 1961-1990. This information is of little use to those devising adaption policies.
Our research has used a model with much finer resolution than those used for the IPCC report, which provides more detail on how regional climates (eg Queensland’s) may change as the world warms. We first verified that this model, called HiGEM, could simulate the key climate phenomena that drive variations in Queensland’s rainfall. This increases our confidence in HiGEM’s projections for Queensland’s climate in a warmer world.
When HiGEM is run with twice the current carbon dioxide concentrations – equivalent to 2100 under our current emissions trajectory – Queensland summer rainfall increases by 20%. Autumn rainfall, however, declines by 25%, such that the annual-total rainfall does not change. The seasonal changes combine to compress the Queensland wet season, however. Currently, this runs from late November through early April; in the double-CO2 world, the wet season lasts only until early March. This would make Queensland much more reliant upon the heavier mid-summer rains in January and February. If the mid-summer rains were to fail, the shorter wet season would mean that the entire year would likely be dry.
Although the annual-total rainfall changes little, the number of wet days declines while the average amount of rain on each wet day increases by nearly 20%. This effect is most apparent for extreme rainfalls: the number of days with more than 100 millimetres of rain increases by 50%. These changes would have considerable impacts on agriculture and water management, as well as increasing the risk of flooding.
A clear disadvantage of our work is that we have examined only one model. Our detailed investigation of the climate drivers of rainfall, however, combined with our verification of HiGEM’s ability to simulate them, argues for giving greater weight to these results.