The Avoiding Dangerous Climate Programme (AVOID) has today published a report describing the results of a study on “Development of emissions pathways meeting a range of long-term temperature targets” 

A larger-scale approach to sustainable farming could be more beneficial for wildlife than our current system of farm-based agri environment payments, say researchers working in the Rural Economy and Land Use programme.

As the global population grows, demands on land become ever greater and environmental change is likely to add to the pressure. The researchers, based at the University of Leeds, have been investigating the most effective approaches to optimising sustainable food production while protecting wildlife.

Your local river tends to flood. Is there anything you as a local councillor or farmer, for instance, can do to reduce the risk or cope better with the consequences? How big is the threat and what counter-measures have proved successful elsewhere in the country? The good news is that the world is awash with data, computer models and IT tools that could help you make sense of just this kind of pressing problem. The bad news is, they can be almost impossible to find and are typically pitched at a level where expert technical knowledge is at a premium.

Ice cream weather. It’s a familiar expression. But it took on another dimension when the Met Office developed an online game, in collaboration with the Universities of Bristol and Cambridge, as part of the new LWEC-accredited PURE (Probability, Uncertainty and Risk in the Environment) initiative. No fewer than 8000 people tried out the game, assuming the role of mobile ice cream seller who had to decide how much ice cream to buy and where to sell it based on weather forecasts that presented probabilistic information (e.g.