Climate Change Research

Find out how you could make a difference for the future of our planet.

Can you help us create a Climate of Change?

Climate change is one of the biggest threats facing our planet. In recent years, we have seen its devastating impact across the world, from wildfires and extreme weather, to loss of biodiversity and the rapid retreat of ice. We have also seen emerging solutions that support our collective response to a changing climate.

At UEA, climate research is at the heart of the big decisions of our time. Our science and social science experts were among the first to prove the world is warming - and today, they’re doing innovative work to combat the impacts of climate change around the globe.

We are at a critical point in our fight against climate change; this decade must be the decade of action. And we need your support.

The UEA Climate Change Action Plan

The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (headquartered at UEA) has nearly 100 members, all highly respected climate researchers, including world-renowned scientists Professor Corinne Le Quéré CBE FRS and Centre Director Professor Andrew J. Jordan FBA FAcSS FISEP.

With our strengths in data collection and trend analysis, UEA can become the leading source of climate change data for scientists, media, the public and government. We regularly present research at UN climate change conferences, and UEA is among the universities that most contributed across disciplines to the multiple authoritative assessment reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

We are bringing together expertise across disciplines to create a practical action plan to tackle our climate emergency, and with your help, we can continue turning world-leading research into real-world solutions.

Our Climate Change Action Plan focuses on four connected areas:

1. A new doctoral training centre of excellence

2. An Ecosystems Research Centre

3. A new Climate Data Dashboard

4. The UEA Polar Initiative

We will establish a new doctoral training centre of excellence to create and nurture the next generation of world leading climate scientists and policy advisers. Climate change is a multi-decadal challenge. The Centre will provide PhD students with state-of-the-art training in advanced interdisciplinary research and impact skills, building on our experience so far.  In the next 10-20 years the cohort of graduate students will enhance UEA’s international reputation for producing world leading research on the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change.  

We will focus on the health of our planet's ecosystems in a changing climate. The health of our planet is very much dependent on the health of our ecosystems. Water, land, trees – they all play an important role in storing carbon and providing us with vital resources – and the better we can understand the pressures they face the better chance we have of counteracting their decline and promoting planetary health.

We will develop a new Climate Data Dashboard with an embedded Chatbot platform to support education and informed decision-making on climate change. The dashboard will cater for both individuals and for machines. For individuals, the Chatbot will make it easy to access and visualise the climate change and subscript 2 in CO₂ emissions data of interest, supporting exploration, education, and informed decision making. For machines, the Dashboard will provide atomic facts about climate-related data, by curating and validating information to be shared with LLMs through an API, hence helping to raise the quality of the information instantly available through AI and help counter misinformation worldwide. As is UEA's ethos, the data will be constantly refreshed and updated as new information becomes available to maintain a current picture of evolution and trends, with briefs and new stories complementing the information.

Finally, we will focus on the place where climate change is manifesting itself most dramatically: in the polar regions, through the UEA Polar Initiative, led by Professor Karen Heywood OBE. Through PICCOLO, researchers are unlocking the Antarctic’s carbon secrets. Over the past 40 years, the sea-ice cover in summer has shrunk by more than half, with climate models predicting that the remaining half could disappear by 2050. The interaction between sea ice and the air above it plays a crucial role in determining the composition of our atmosphere and the exchange of greenhouse gases. And sea ice is host to an array of unique microorganisms which underpin entire food chains and ecosystems. Researchers at UEA’s specialist laboratory, the Roland von Glasow Air-Sea-Ice Chamber, are attempting to unravel the mechanisms behind sea ice loss to better understand its role as a driver of climate change, as well as its impact on delicate polar ecosystems.

As part of this work, our researchers are also using autonomous ocean gliders to collect vital data in hard-to-reach polar environments, feeding new observations into climate models to improve predictions and support better-informed decisions. There’s no time to waste. Already, the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is at risk of collapse, bringing with it the risk of significant sea-level rise. With 40% of the world’s population living within 100km of the ocean, even small sea level rises could threaten homes, infrastructure, economies, and lives.

Spotlight

Donor support is enabling Viktoria Nikolaus to progress her PhD research with Professor Karen Heywood, using Seagliders to explore how oceans influence the global climate. This is the kind of long-term, data-led work that helps decision-makers act with confidence.

"Reliable, long-term data is essential… but it often depends on short-term funding.”- Viktoria Nikolaus, PhD researcher.

Latest Climate Insight

How You Can Help

To deliver UEA’s Climate Change Action Plan, we need to invest in people and capability – especially the next generation of climate researchers.

Fund a PhD Scholarship

Give an early career researcher the time, training and specialist support to focus on urgent climate questions, and turn data into real world impact.

Support research leadership

Back new Chairs and senior posts to attract and retain world leading expertise at UEA.

Power the tools and data behind decision-making

Help equip teams with the facilities, platforms and validated datasets needed to accelerate climate solutions and counter misinformation.

To make this achievable we are urgently inviting partnerships, donations and sponsorship from alumni, philanthropists, charities, trusts and corporations from all over the world. 

To discuss our ambitious plans or to make a gift to support our action plan, please get in touch at giving@uea.ac.uk or call us on +44 (0)7990 43106

You can also make a donation online today.