New strategic research programme to reduce uncertainties

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) has announced new investment in a large-scale strategic research programme on Reducing Uncertainties in Climate Models from Clouds.

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) has announced new investment in a large-scale strategic research programme on Reducing Uncertainties in Climate Models from Clouds.

The strategic programme area (SPA) is the outcome of NERC’s Ideas process for strategic research. The original idea for the programme came from a National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) Research Forum and was submitted by Professor Alan Blyth, NCAS at Leeds.

The case was then developed by an independent writing team commissioned by NERC and eventually presented to NERC Science Board by Professor Ken Carslaw and Professor Joanna Haigh (Imperial College). The programme was up against two other major ideas.

Cloud feedbacks are a fundamental and persistent problem in climate science and are the dominant uncertainty in assessing global and regional climate sensitivity. The Reducing Uncertainties in Climate Models from Clouds programme will enable a step change in quantifying and reducing uncertainty in cloud feedbacks under climate change by exploiting existing and new observations, together with new capacity in climate modelling.

Leeds has a long and successful track record of research on clouds and climate, including research carried out in the Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science and the National Centre for Atmospheric Science.

The success of this programme is in part due to a long tradition in Leeds of combining observations and modelling of physical processes. Long-term collaboration with the Met Office has led to the development of some of the advanced computer models that will form an essential part of the future research programme.