The uptake and use of new climate projections in risk assessment and decision-making in the UK

The UK Government has commissioned a new set of climate scenarios as a tool for national and local Government, businesses and other interested stakeholders to assess the challenges, opportunities and potential actions needed in the face of climate variability and future climate change. The scenarios and guidance on using them will be released during 2018: http://ukclimateprojections.metoffice.gov.uk/24125. Unlike previous UK national scenarios the current project to produce scenarios and guidance has placed a greater emphasis on user requirements and needs during the design and production phases and has attempted to learn lessons around what has hindered the uptake of previous climate information for risk planning in the UK (e.g., Tang and Dessai 2012, Porter et al. 2015). We now want to understand whether this has been successful and critically assess and publish what could work better in the future.

The aim of this PhD project is to study the uptake of these new scenarios, called UKCP18, and their use in a number of decision-making, planning and communication for climate adaptation related issues in the UK. It will draw from the literature and good practice to develop a range of metrics to measure the success of the scenario information and critically assess how future national scenarios can be improved. Part of this task may involve comparing the UK experience with that of one or more nations who have recently produced scenarios or are planning to do so over the next year or so (Lorenz et al. 2017, Skelton et al. 2017).

The successful candidate is likely to come from a background of either physical or social science and will develop and apply techniques from social science to track and measure the uptake and use of the climate scenario products. This will require the candidate to develop a detailed understanding of the different climate products and user applications. The project will be supervised by Professor Jason Lowe, who led the production of the new scenarios and is responsible for considering the provision of future climate information by the Met Office, and Professor Suraje Desai, who researches the use and uptake of climate information for decision-making.

Applications
In addition to the on-line study application and supporting documents (CV, degree transcripts, and academic references), candidates are asked to:
(i) submit a statement of motivation that explains why this project is of particular interest and how their qualifications map onto the requirements of this project; and
(ii) provide up to 1000 words document with their ideas for a methodology to approach this challenge.

For more information:
For more information on UKCP09 see: http://ukclimateprojections.metoffice.gov.uk/22530
For information on UKCP18 see: http://ukclimateprojections.metoffice.gov.uk/24125