Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford
Research led by
Related climate themes
Publications
- Otto, F.E.L., Wolski, P., Lehner, F., Tebaldi, C., Jan van Oldenborgh, G., Higesteeger, S., Singh, R., Holden, P., Fuckar, N.S., Odoulami, R. and New, M. (2018) Anthropogenic influence on the drivers of the Western Cape drought 2015 – 2017. Environmental Research Letters, 13(12).
- Allen, M.R., Shine, K.P., Fuglestvedt, J.S., Millar, R.J., Cain, M. and Frame, D.J. (2018) A solution to the misrepresentations of CO2-equivalent emissions of short-lived climate pollutants under ambitious mitigation. Climate and Atmospheric Science.
More publications
- Funding: Climate Central
- 2014-present
- Dr Friederike Otto
World Weather Attribution
What influence does human-induced climate change have on extreme weather events? WWA offers the possibility to assess the influence directly while the event is still taking place.
- Funding: UK Research and Innovation Fund
- 2018-2023
- PI: Dr Clare Heaviside
Human health in an increasingly urbanized and warming world
A study to improve the representation of urban areas in climate models and examination the associated health impacts of urban areas. Examples will include air pollution, indoor air quality, wellbeing and hospitalization from hot and cold weather events.
- Funding: Formas (Swedish funding agency)
- 2019-2022
- Dr Friederike Otto, Lund Universitet
Recasting the Disproportionate Impacts of Climate Change Extremes (DICE)
How can and must we deal with the loss and damage caused by climate change? The DICE project focuses on conceptualising, measuring, and governing loss and damage, including both economic and non-economic impacts. Key questions include: how, why and who is affected, what a global framework could look like, and what links exist between loss and damage governance and adaptation governance.
- Funding: BNP Paribas ERC
- 2016-2020
- ECI Lead: Dr Friederike Otto
Biophysical and Economic Impacts of Hydroclimatic Extremes (HIASA)
What influence does anthropogenic climate change have on droughts and floods, and how does local human activity change the vulnerability of regions? The division of climate risk into individual factors is crucial to develop the right adaptation measures. This project is based in South Africa, but results will be applicable to a wider range of climate change loss and damage situations across the world.
- Funding: European Commission
- 2016-2020
- ECI Lead: Professor Jim Hall
Global Excellence in Modelling of Climate and Energy (GEMCLIME)
The global GEMCLIME project focuses on major aspects of energy economics and climate change, which is a prime example of an important global and complex scientific and policy problem. GEMCLIME covers the drivers of climate change, the examination of climate change and energy-related risks and vulnerabilities, the valuation of economic impacts of climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, and the investigation of major policy responses to global climate and energy challenges.
- Funding: Oxford Martin School
- 2016-2020
- Professor Myles Allen, Professor Yadvinder Malhi and Dr Friederike Otto
Oxford Martin TNC Climate Partnership
The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and the University of Oxford have joined forces in a major new scientific partnership to better understand how extreme weather events and human actions will both influence, and be influenced by, our changing climate. In particular, what effects do anthropogenic climate change and human activities have on the Amazon rainforest, and how can future damage be reduced?
- Funding: Oxford Martin School
- 2015-2019
- Professor Myles Allen
Oxford Martin Net Zero Carbon Investment Initiative
Academics from the Universities of Oxford, Harvard and Columbia are consulting with the scientific and investment communities in combination with fossil fuel industry stakeholders to address the issues involved. What would a safe fossil fuel investment look like in a world in transition to net zero carbon emissions? What does a company that remains engaged in fossil fuel extraction need to do to reassure its investors and customers that it is acting responsibly; and to ensure that its activities are not committing future taxpayers or shareholders to expensive climate adaptation, mitigation or remediation measures?
Long-term and completed projects
- Original funding (2002): NERC / UK Government Department of Trade and Industry
- 2002 onwards
- ECI Lead: Dr Friederike Otto
Climateprediction.net
A distributed computing project to produce predictions of the Earth's climate up to 2100 and to test the accuracy of climate models. The Weather@Home experiment allows us to simulate models at a regional scale to tell us more abut regional and local weather.
- Original funding (2002): NERC / UK Government Department of Trade and Industry
- 2002 onwards
- PI: Professor Myles Allen
Weather@home 2015: Western US Drought
A weather@home experiment to determine whether climate change has contributed to the 2015 drought in Western USA.
- Funding: NERC / Future Climate for Africa Programme
- 2015-2019
- ECI Lead: Dr Rachel James
Improving Model Processes for African cLimAte (IMPALA)
IMPALA aims to deliver a step change in predictive capability for African climate on the 5-40 year timescales.
- Funding: Oxford Martin School
- 2015-2019
- Professors Myles Allen and Jim Hall
The Oxford Martin Programme on Resource Stewardship
This programme works across the sciences, social sciences and humanities to radically rethink global resource stewardship. The programme aims to deliver a framework, accountable to future generations, that will create actionable input on critical global issues such as freshwater resources, land-use and atmosphere.
- Funding: ERC
- 2013-2018
- ECI Lead: Dr Friederike Otto
Transition Into The Anthropocene (TITAN)
A five year project to learn about the climate system from 19th and early 20th century data. The project aims for a step change in understanding climate change based on a substantial observation record from historical shipping reports.
- 2016-17
- PI: Dr Daniel Mitchell
HAPPI: Half a degree Additional warming, Projections, Prognosis and Impacts
The decision on whether to increase the ambition of climate change mitigation efforts to stabilise temperatures at 1.5°C rather than 2°C above pre-industrial is arguably one of the most momentous to be made in the coming decade, and is currently poorly served by the paucity of scientific analysis of the relative risks associated with these two outcomes (James et al, 2016), particularly regarding the role of extreme weather. The Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in its Paris Agreement of 2015, invited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to prepare a Special Report in 2018 “on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related greenhouse gas emission pathways.” To inform such an assessment, research will need to be undertaken immediately, over the period 2016 to 2017.
- Funding: European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme
- 2014-2017
- Professor Myles Allen
European climate and weather events - interpretation and attribution (EUCLEIA)
This project will develop the means to provide reliable information about extreme weather and climate risks using event attribution across Europe.
- Funding: NERC
- 2013-2016
- Dr Friederike Otto
Attributing impacts of external climate drivers on extreme weather (ACE-Africa)
This project looks at whether and to what extent climate change is already affecting the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events on the African continent. It also investigates the impacts of such extreme weather events on river flow and crops.
