School of Earth and Environment

Sustainability Research (SRI) PhD Projects

Climate Services for Society

Application deadline: 16 January 2012. Interviews are expected to take place in early February and an April 2012 start date is anticipated.

Funded PhD studentship: 3-year scholarship to fund UK/EU tuition fees (£3,732 for 2011/12) and UK research council level of stipend (£13,590 for 2011/12).

Entry requirements/necessary background for students: The minimum entry requirement is 2.1 UK BSc (Hons), but students with Masters degrees are preferred. Preference is given for students with a background in social sciences, particularly science and technology studies, environmental social science and environmental geography.

Climate services have been framed as the generation and provision of climate information and knowledge for decision-making at all levels of society. These services are particularly targeted at informing adaptation to climate variability and change, widely recognised as an important challenge for the sustainable development of society.

In 2009 the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) launched the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS; see figure below). This framework aims to “ensure that every country and every climate-sensitive sector of society is well equipped to access and apply the growing array of climate prediction and information services made possible by recent and emerging developments in international climate science and technology”. The WMO expects this framework to mainstream climate science into everyday life, with its ultimate goal: “To enable better management of the risks of climate variability and change at all levels, through development and incorporation of science-based climate information and prediction into planning, policy and practice”. Climate services are also being developed at supra-national (European), national (UK, Germany, USA) and regional scales.

This project seeks to better understand the development of climate services across scales. The project will develop metrics, tools, and methods that can evaluate the value of climate services in enabling society to adapt to a changing climate. There would be scope to tailor the broad project template to a particular scale (global, national or regional), depending on language and other skills. Also, the broad topic can be tailored to a comparative analysis of two or more national climate services or a comparison of climate services across scales.

Supporting documents:
If you would like to be considered for research in this area, you will need to provide a short research proposal. This should be no longer than 6 pages, plus referencing. You will need to present the proposal in sections including 1) an introduction, 2) short literature review and novelty of the proposed research 3) research problem and questions 4) study area / site, materials and methods, and 5) references. Referencing should be done in the style of a journal related to this research area.