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University launches new initiative for Earth System Modelling

May 26, 1999

REF: 99/6
21 JANUARY 1999

A new initiative for Earth System Modelling is to be established at Southampton Oceanography Centre. The programme of research will develop new models which will lead to a greater understanding of natural climate change, and the processes behind global warming.

`This is an exciting new initiative for the University,' said Vice-Chancellor, Professor Howard Newby, `especially with the approach of the next millennium. Existing climate change models make predictions on the basis of data only from the recent past, which has been unusually stable.We need models which allow for the natural variability of the climate system. The programme will seek to explain global change due to natural causes as well as human activities, and therefore will assist governments and policy-makers to decide what needs to be done.'

The new initiative will develop advanced modelling techniques based on information gathered from all over the world, and from the geological record. It will be the focal point of a national and international effort, involving scientists in many institutions and in other countries. The new models will include the interactions between the atmosphere, the oceans, the ice caps and the biosphere, and aim to develop an integrated understanding of how the global environment works.

The research will be supported by an initial grant from the Natural Environment Research Council.

Professor Newby added: `This is potentially the most exciting scientific project to come to the University since the SOC was planned almost ten years ago.'

The Director of the new initiative will be Professor John Shepherd who has been Director of the SOC since 1994.
Professor Shepherd said: `Trying to model the whole Earth System is a huge challenge but one which we at the SOC are well placed to meet. To have secured this for the Southampton Oceanography Centre is a vote of confidence in the breadth and quality of the science which is conducted here. The work will complement existing centres of excellence at the Hadley Centre, at the Universities of
East Anglia and Reading and in other NERC centres and surveys.'

The new initiative will begin work on 1 April 1999, and take about two years to reach full strength.

Southampton, University of

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