Shaun is Director of the UK's National Environmental Research Council's Centre for Terrestrial Carbon Dynamics and Director of the Sheffield Centre for Earth Observation Science. He’s also just handed over Chairmanship of the Terrestrial Carbon Observation Panel (part of the Global Terrestrial Observing System partnership) to Riccardo Valentini. ...

The main objective of the ENSEMBLES project is to provide probabilistic estimates of climatic risk through ensemble integrations of Earth system models. The project will develop an ensemble climate forecast system for use across a range of timescales (seasonal, decadal and longer) and spatial scales (global, regional and local). This modelling system will be used to construct scenarios of future climate change which will provide a basis for quantitative risk assessment of climate change and climate variability. Emphasis will be placed on changes in extreme events (for example the severity and frequency of heatwaves, drought, forest fires, storminess and flooding), and the effects of high-impact but low-probability events such as a shutdown of the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic. The project will also validate the ensemble prediction system using quality-controlled, high-resolution gridded data sets for Europe; quantify and reduce the uncertainty in the representation of physical, chemical, biological, and human-related feedbacks in the Earth system (including water resource, land-use, and air quality issues, and carbon cycle feedbacks); and link the outputs of the ensemble prediction system to a range of applications, including agriculture, health, energy and water resources. The 5 year project is funded by the European Commission’s Sixth Framework Programme as an “Integrated Project”, and is now into its second year. ...

ESPACE (European Spatial Planning: Adapting to Climate Events), is a four year project funded by the European Commission’s North West Europe INTERREG IIIB Programme and the UK Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. It is one of the first projects of its kind to focus on increasing the awareness of the need to adapt to climate change and to begin to provide some of the necessary policy guidance, tools and mechanisms to incorporate adaptation into planning systems and processes. ...