Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research

What is the Tyndall Centre?

The Tyndall Centre is a unique partnership between a selection of researchers from six UK research institutions, who together form the Tyndall Consortium.

The Tyndall Centre has been doing high quality and interdisciplinary research since 2000. From 2000 to 2010 the Tyndall Centre received core funding from the NERC, EPSRC and ESRC. These are some highlights from the work at this time.

What did the Tyndall Centre do?

• responded to policy demands for improved information at the local and regional levels on impacts, attribution and uncertainty around climate change.
• developed comprehensive approaches to decarbonisation, for the UK and for the world, from national and international energy systems and policy frameworks through to personal energy consumption and behaviour.
• used insights from across the natural and social sciences to investigate the options and constraints on action towards sustainable and equitable adaptation to climate change.
• investigated security and resilience in water, energy and ecosystem services.
• furthered the analysis of coastal change and its consequences.
• delivered the report Engineering Cities: How can cities grow whilst reducing emissions and vulnerability?

Outputs

Highlights from the workstreams 2009-2010 as the last year of Research Council core funding included:

1. Informing international climate policy

- held an international conference on 4 degrees of climate change
- attended the Copenhagen climate change negotiations in December 2009
- provided input to the USA Climate Choices study, giving insights from UK and EU policy and research.

2. Avoiding dangerous climate change

- provided evidence to select committees and frequent dialogue was held with the UK Committee on Climate Change
- briefed UK and Chinese government officials on low carbon pathways for China
- participated in the International Maritime Organisation negotiations in Copenhagen
- researchers visited Guangdong, China to discuss research collaborations
- insights from UK-India research were featured in the UK Government’s Road to Copenhagen international climate policy document published in mid-2009.
- business flying - a policy report was presented to the North West Development agency and Manchester Airport on regional and business flying.

3. Adaptation

- discussed the political implications of Tyndall’s high emission scenarios with MPs and senior policy makers at the House of Commons All Party group on Climate Survival.
- presented at the Lisbon session of the European Consortium for Political Research; at a joint symposium with Japan and at the Amsterdam Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change, Earth System Governance: People, Places and the Planet.
- presented at the National Audit Office strategic planning workshop and at a European Commission Regional Policy expert seminar on Cohesion Policy and Climate Change.
- addressed the Princeton/Royal United Services Institute Global Leadership Forum, presented on Climate Change Policy in the European Union.

4. Security and resilience

- advised on climate change vulnerability and adaptation assessment projects in Vietnam.
- led a major policy study commissioned by the European Union, to help develop an implementation plan for the EU Strategy on Disaster Risk Reduction in developing countries.
- provided advice on integration of disaster risk reduction and climate change in Finnish Aid, funded by the Finnish government.
- advised IUCN on positioning their work with respect to environmental change and development policy and research agendas.
- held focus groups with policy makers on the implications of climate change and changing water use on water security and adaptation needs in Cairo, Addis Ababa and Entebbe.

5. Coasts

- the Coastal Simulator was used for operational tool development for coastal management by the EA/DEFRA.
- contributed to UK Government perspectives on climate change via the AVOID work on port cities and sea-level rise.
- contributed to the debate on the costs of adaptation to climate change and development. This work is continuing under the World Bank costing studies.

6. Cities

- published a user-orientated report which describes the integrated assessment tool and results of policy analysis.
- improved the assessment tool and created more realistic results and key messages from the the Urban Integrated Assessment Framework.
- improved projections of water deficit and surface water flooding for London.

PROGRAMME FACTS AND FIGURES

From April 01 2009 to March 31 2010 the Tyndall Centre received core-funding of £2,992,205 from the NERC, EPSRC and ESRC. From 2000-2010 it received £18 million in total.

The transition year was the tenth and final year of core funding from the Research Councils.

Website: www.tyndall.ac.uk