Climate information for improved adaptation decision-making: NERC and Environment Agency Policy Placement Fellowship

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The need for effective long-term adaptation to climate change is widely recognised. The UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) sets out the main risks to the UK from climate change and the priorities for adaptation. Through 2012, the Government will be developing the National Adaptation Programme to set out the actions that will be taken to improve resilience to climate change. One such action is for the Environment Agency to provide advice and support to businesses and public sector organisations to help them adapt to a changing climate. There is scope for greater understanding of how best to represent climate change information to enable adaptation decision-making. Therefore, the aim of the policy placement will be to use research to inform the development and delivery of climate information through the Environment Agency's new Climate Ready adaptation advice service.Traditional approaches to environmental planning make an implicit assumption of climate stationarity: the weather experienced in recent decades is used to represent the climatic conditions of the future. Simple methods allow adjustment of historic climate to represent future conditions, while effectively maintaining the assumption of climate stationarity. However, these methods are not suitable for use with transient climate projections, and new approaches may need to be developed.This policy placement is intended to investigate this problem further with case studies drawn from the Environment Agency's new adaptation advice duties, which cover key sectors including: built environment, forestry and agriculture, and major infrastructure. It will examine the question of whether the use of transient climate sequences improves long-term planning for climate change. The fellow will work in the climate change research team in the Evidence Directorate. This team has a strong track record of delivering high quality policy-relevant research, as well as an impressive list of peer-reviewed publications. This is an outstanding opportunity to develop research that has a genuine impact with practitioners.