• Project 1: What is the transient sea level sensitivity in CMIP6 models?

    Many will be familiar with the concept of transient climate sensitivity: what is the transient temperature response to a doubling in CO2 concentrations? This is a key question for understanding the response of the climate system to CO2 forcing. But there are other important transient responses we need to understand....

  • Project 2: How well do the CMIP6 models represent the tropical rainfall belt over Africa?

    Movement of the tropical rain belt (TRB) is arguably the most important determinant of regional climate in Africa: its average seasonal position defines humidity or aridity and fluctuations lead to flooding or drought. Accurate simulation of the TRB is thus essential to build confidence in future projections of regional African...

  • Project 3: Characterising the marine carbon cycle in CMIP6

    Recent ocean heat uptake has been unprecedented, with the last five years being the warmest in recorded history. Superimposed on this secular trend, human-induced warming of the oceans has also caused more persistent and intense periods of extreme sea surface temperature, termed ‘marine heatwaves’. Marine heatwaves can rapidly disrupt marine...

  • Project 4: Testing proxies of AMOC variability in CMIP6

    The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) plays an important role in regulating Earth’s climate. Concerns over its stability in a warming climate have prompted a concerted effort to monitor the AMOC in recent decades, most prominently with the RAPID array at 26N. Yet, such direct observational records are still too...

  • Project 5: The atmospheric response to sea-ice loss in the PAMIP experiments and its sensitivity to model biases

    Polar amplification, the phenomenon that external radiative forcing produces a larger change in surface temperature at high latitudes than the global average, is a key aspect of anthropogenic climate change, but its causes and consequences are not fully understood. The Polar Amplification Model Intercomparison Project (PAMIP) seeks to improve our...

  • Project 6: Differences between 'turning down the sun' and stratospheric sulfate injection

    Solar geoengineering refers to the idea of deliberately increasing Earth’s albedo to temporarily cool the planet while we cut emissions and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. There are many ways this could be achieved, the most studied is stratospheric sulfate injection, which mimics what happens during a volcanic eruption....

  • Project 7: Uncertainty in sea-ice-cloud feedbacks across the CMIP6 ensemble

    To what extent will constraining sea-ice-cloud feedbacks reduce uncertainty in our understanding of Arctic amplification and global climate sensitivity? Both observations and modelling studies have evidenced the importance of polar clouds (and aerosol) in controlling the surface energy budget at high-latitudes. High-latitude clouds are highly sensitive to changes in aerosol...

  • Project 8: Interactive graphics of key CMIP6-based IPCC figures

    Figures in IPCC reports, especially those in the Summaries for Policy Makers, are often densely packed with information from multiple sources. This makes it challenging to understand the full impact of the figure without having additional information. This project will investigate adding interactive elements to key IPCC figures from the...

  • Project 9: Impacts of changing wind regimes and sea ice on the world's longest migrant

    Arctic terns are one of very few species in the world to spend considerable parts of time every year at both poles, migrating at least 90,000 km per year between the two (1, 2), which is the longest recorded migration of any animal. They are particularly vulnerable to climate change,...

  • Project 10: Human heat stress in a warming world

    Climate projections tend to agree that extremes of heat over the populated land surface areas of the world will rise faster than the global mean surface temperature (Samset et al., 2018; Schleussner et al., 2016; Seneviratne and Hauser, 2020). Traditional extremes of heat and other climate indices defined by the...