Month: December 2021

Human health is entwined with the health of our planet

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

It’s a short time since COP26 finished in Glasgow. Many colleagues from the University of Bristol were there to discuss their research and share knowledge with those who are making decisions about policies that impact everyone’s futures. When we think about climate change, we often think about the health of the planet and the natural world, but the health of our planet is entwined to the health of the human population too. Here, Elizabeth Blackwell Institute Director, Rachael Gooberman-Hill, gives a timely update on our research looking at the intersection between climate and health.

We’re already seeing local and global impacts of climate change on human health. The World Health Organization states that in the 20 years from 2030 to 2050 climate change will cause around 250,000 additional deaths per year, which is a timeframe that starts in just eight years from now.

These, arguably preventable, deaths will relate to malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat. Health impacts of climate change will disproportionately affect people who are already vulnerable in other ways, including people who are young, old, living with other conditions, or living in situations of vulnerability including poverty and other dimensions of disadvantage. Climate change is associated with changes in infectious diseases and non-communicable conditions, such as mental health difficulties. Heat and extreme weather events have major impact on health, cause forced migration and these issues are global in scale. In the UK, extreme weather events and heat are already visible and are likely to become more common and more impactful.

Embedding climate in current research

Broadly speaking, research efforts include work to reduce rise in our planet’s temperature and attempts to address, mitigate, and adapt to the impact of the rises that are already happening. At the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute we are working with the Cabot Institute for the Environment. As researchers, we can change focus of our research, can embed climate in the research that we are already planning or doing, and we can also consider that all of the research that we do is already impacted by climate change and will already have much to add to the evidence base that can underpin change and make a difference.

Mapping activity in climate research

The University of Bristol has a world-leading track record in environment-focused research already. We recently mapped the research activity in this area and identified 39 climate and health related research projects and over 150 members of our research community working in this area. We work on many topics, including extreme weather events, heat, water and sanitation, animal health, crops and nutrition, and social impacts of climate change. The University is an active member of the Met Office Academic Partnership (MOAP), we contribute considerable and internationally recognised expertise to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), including in the crucial assessment reports which provide the scientific evidence base. We’re active in the GW4 Climate Alliance, comprising the Universities of Bristol, Cardiff, Bath, and Exeter.

Potential to pivot

There is real potential now to build this area even more. Many members of our University are deeply concerned about climate change and many are doing work that helps, or want to do so. We are a community whose research is often driven by our sense of social responsibility and we’ve seen before how our desire to make a difference can drive new focus. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic we saw large parts of the University’s research community turn skills and attention to the virus and its impact. At the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute we supported over 90 projects that focused on COVID-19 and owe thanks to everyone for the vast effort that has been put into research with real world impact. The effort to focus on COVID-19 showed how our expert researchers can pivot quickly onto new topic areas, although other topics remained urgent and important alongside our pandemic-related work.

Supporting more climate research

The Elizabeth Blackwell Institute wants to support the desire and need to work on climate change and health, whether that’s to enable people to pivot to the area, build on existing work or to encompass climate change into existing workstreams. We’ve already supported projects focused on climate change and health, with particular emphasis on interdisciplinary research. We want to support even more. As we move forward from COP26, please consider how your research can address climate change and health and let us know about your plans and ideas.

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This blog is by Elizabeth Blackwell Institute Director, Rachael Gooberman-Hill . View the original post.

Rachel Gooberman-Hill

Telling the story of temperature

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

Image credit: Brigstow Institute

 

What is the most extreme temperature you have experienced?

Take your time and have a moment to think about it.

What was happening that day? Where were you? Which of your senses feature in the memory? Do any emotions come back to you?

While you’re thinking about it, I’ll tell you a little bit about the Temperature Life Stories project that I brought to COP26 on 1st November 2021.

We all experience temperature differently. The hottest day I remember might be very different from the hottest day you remember. Where we have been, when we were there and our specific circumstances at a given moment all affect the physical temperatures we have lived through. We have lived different temperature life stories.

Why does this matter? Even in the UK, in Glasgow where world leaders will be meeting for COP26, which we often think of as being cold and driech, some people will be at risk from extreme temperatures. Meanwhile, for some of us that have always lived in and become acclimatised to temperate climate zones, we may never appreciate the searing strength of heat experienced by others on a daily basis. What does “1.5 °C or 2 °C of global warming above pre-industrial temperatures” even mean for ourselves or individuals like us elsewhere in the world? Expressing our differences in circumstances in creative ways can help build new understandings and narratives of how we will live with temperature extremes in a warming world.

The Temperature Life Stories project explored these questions. By digging into global temperature data, the same data that informs global temperature targets, we produced temperature life story graphs for both individuals and our collective of research participants. As individuals we may never ‘feel’ the global average temperature, but our experience is part of that bigger picture. Memories and experiences of temperature were explored through poetry, with exercises designed by Caleb Parkin (Bristol City Poet, 2020-2022), and a host of other creative methods from the wonderful (and hidden) talents of our research participants.

Of course, there were and will be contradictions too. The temperature that the data says we lived through might not match what we remember as being the most extreme of days. But that’s okay: unreliable narrators are part of storytelling, aren’t they?

So back to COP26, what was Temperature Life Stories doing there? Of course, I would have loved to have run a series of poetry workshops with international COP26 delegates to take the temperature of the conference, but unfortunately for them, time is more of the essence. For that reason, I settled for a providing a tiny morsel of the project as a taster at the COP26 Green Zone.

I asked attendees to spare just one key memory from their temperature life story. Something that stood out for them. I asked for them to describe it in just a few lines, which could be as poetic or as factual as they pleased. I asked them where and when the memory occurred (being as specific as they could or wanted to be).

Often, relative warmth appears in the memories: perhaps not extreme in a global sense, but enough to seem unusual to locals and visitors alike in Yorkshire, the Hebridies, alpine and polar environments. Sometimes a lack of snow says as much as burnt brown grass. Travel appears regularly, making up a key part of temperature life stories – both the biting cold of northern climates after a lifetime spent nearer the tropics and vice versa. Even a momentary blast of air changing connecting flights in Qatar can give a glimpse of what temperatures are possible. We don’t expect similar blasts of heat to hit us getting off the train in Birmingham, but recent summer heatwaves featured regularly in memories too, and in with them that same wall of heat. Finally, there are emotions too: nostalgia about climates of home or childhood not being the same when people return after time spent away, sadness for places of significance lost in wildfires, weeks of unbroken heat and sunshine “both amazing and terrifying”.

Using this collection of memories, a bespoke map of experience, emotions and stories in space and time will be produced for the COP26 conference. An alternative story of a warming world. Keep an eye on Brigstow channels in the coming weeks for this.

So what about you? Have you been thinking of your memory of temperature? Maybe it was during last summer’s heatwave. Maybe you were on holiday. Maybe you were stuck in an unairconditioned bus in a traffic jam. Maybe the heat was emotional, not physical: passion, anger or embarrassment. There is no right or wrong answers – every story is different.

If you have a memory and want to add it to our collective COP26 story, you can add it here (https://forms.office.com/r/HnwesuwJqg). We’ll ask you for the same information as the Green Zone participants an all memories and data recorded is anonymous.

Together we can rewrite a new story of our warming world. One which shows our vulnerabilities, frailties and fears but also our lighter moments, hopes, achievements. We have a complex relationship with the weather and climate we experience. Sometimes a graph can’t say it all.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Alan Kennedy-Asser from Brigstow Institute funded Experimental Partnership “Temperature Life Stories: Feeling the heat”. This blog has been reposted from the Bristow Institute blog with kind permission from the Brigstow Institute. View the original blog.

Net Zero Oceanographic Capability: the future of marine research

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

Image credit: Eleanor Frajka-Williams, NOC.

Our oceans are crucial in regulating global climate and are essential to life on Earth. The marine environment is being impacted severely by multiple and cumulative stressors, including pollution, ocean acidification, resource extraction, and climate change. Scientific understanding of marine systems today and in the future, and their sensitivity to these stressors, is essential if we are to manage our oceans, and achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, these systems are complex – with a vast array of interacting physical, chemical, biological and sociological components – and operate on scales of microns to kilometres, and milliseconds to millennia. To address these challenges, modern marine science spans a wide range of multidisciplinary topics, including understanding the fundamental drivers of ocean circulation, ecosystem behaviour and its response to climate change, causes of and consequences of polar ice cap melt, and the impacts of ocean warming on sea level, weather and climate. Marine scientists investigate problems of societal relevance such as food security, hazards relating to sea level rise, storm surges and underwater volcanoes, and understanding the consequences of offshore development on the health of the ocean in the context of building a sustainable blue economy. With the start of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development in 2021, there is a clear motivation not only for more research, but for sustainable approaches.

However, a key challenge facing all scientists in the near future is the absolute necessity to reduce and mitigate all carbon emissions, achieving ‘Net Zero’. Among many of the high-impact pledges made over recent months, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have promised to achieve Net Zero by 2040. UKRI is the umbrella organisation encompassing all of the UK Research Councils including the Natural Environment Research Council, which funds the National Oceanography Centre and British Antarctic Survey to operate the large-scale UK marine research infrastructure.

Whilst marine science is intrinsically linked to Net Zero objectives since the ocean is a major sink of anthropogenic carbon and excess heat, the carrying out marine research itself contributes to the problem in question: ocean-going research vessels use considerable amounts of fossil fuels. Ship-based observations allow scientists to address global challenges, to support ocean observing networks, make measurements not possible via satellite, or in remote and extreme environments. Such observations are essential to establish a thorough picture of how the ocean is changing, and the underlying processes behind the complex interweaving of physics, chemistry, biology and geology within marine systems, but can only continue into the future if the carbon footprint of sea-going research is cut dramatically.

Image credit: Eleanor Frajka-Williams, NOC.

 

The Net Zero Oceanographic Capability (NZOC) scoping review, led by the National Oceanography Centre but supported by researchers from around the UK, is a groundbreaking project aimed at understanding the drivers and enablers of future oceanographic research in a Net Zero world. New technologies and infrastructure – together with multidisciplinary, international approaches, and collaborations with private and public sector stakeholders – are going to be increasingly important to advance understanding of the oceans and climate, while accomplishing Net Zero. The NZOC team are building a picture of a future research ecosystem that capitalises upon emerging technologies in shipping, marine autonomous systems (MAS) sensor technology and data science.  Ships will still be an essential linchpin of a new marine observing network, to gather critical information that may not be accessible using MAS, and to enable the maximum value to be extracted from datastreams collected during oceanographic expeditions.  The new Net Zero approaches have the potential to not just replace existing marine research capability with one less damaging to the environment, but also to expand and extend it, with new tools available more marine observing, new avenues of research opened up, and wider accessibility.  In order to achieve its potential, the development of new systems, and adaptation and improvement of existing methodologies, must be co-designed between technologists and scientists, including modellers and data scientists, as well as those engaged with sea-going observations.  Investment in an equitable, diverse and inclusive marine workforce must be considered from the beginning, with engagement in skills training for existing and future marine researchers so that scientists are primed to use the new approaches afforded by a Net Zero approach to their full potential.  All of these initiatives have to deliver on their promise in a co-ordinated way and in a short timeframe.  Many of them will rely upon global infrastructures and international systems that must similarly adapt at pace.

Image credit: Eleanor Frajka-Williams, NOC.

Environmental and climate scientists overwhelmingly and urgently support a move towards Net Zero. However, we cannot overstate the importance of getting the transition to Net Zero right. Whilst an ever-growing number of UK marine scientists are using MAS and low carbon options, NZOC also identified a number of case studies where achieving Net Zero will limit marine science – possibly permanently – if not addressed.  These include research areas where scientists need to drill into deep rock, or carry out intricate biological or geochemical experiments and measurements. Any transition to using new methods must be managed flexibly, requiring intersection between old and new technologies, due consideration to accessibility, and verification and validation by the wider scientific community.

Achieving Net Zero is one of the most important societal goals over the next decade. We can not only maintain but also build on marine science capability – essential for meeting Net Zero targets – with equitable and fair strategic planning, co-design of new approaches, and by taking advantage of new opportunities that arise from emerging technologies.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Katharine Hendry is an Associate Professor in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. With Contributions by Eleanor Frajka-Williams, National Oceanography Centre (NOC).
Dr Katharine Hendry

 

Cabot Institute round-up 2021

Posted on by janet.crompton

What a year! Our Institute has accomplished so much, not just from the hard work of the Cabot Institute Team but also the wider Cabot academic community and beyond. We’d like to share with you some of our highlights of the year and say a big thank you to all of you who got involved and supported us along the way.

Cool collaborations

Rising Arts x Emma Blake Morsi

We collaborated with Rising Arts Agency and talented artist Emma Blake Morsi to create three pieces of art around Caboteer’s research on adaptation and resilience. Emma took that research and interpreted it in her own beautiful way to create some art which we put on billboards around the city in the Summer.

Emma Blake Morsi in front of one of the billboards she designed.

Cabot Conversations

Adele Hulin and Amanda Woodman-Hardy worked with film company JonesMillbank and a bunch of talented artists, academics and thought leaders to create Cabot Conversations. This series of climate change conversations take place while artists work in the background, listening to the conversations and creating stunning artworks that are captured on camera in real time. The Conversations are available to watch as 30 minutes videos on YouTube and listen as 1 hour long podcasts on all good podcast platforms.

COP26

Cabot Institute at COP26
It’s hard to comprehend the amount of work that went into getting the University ready and present at COP26. Twelve long hard months of work in the background from the core Cabot Team, our already overstretched academics, a whole cohort of incredible students and full backing from our Senior Management Team and the University’s Professional Services teams, meant we actually had a fantastic turnout and time at COP26. Our public engagement, experts in the media and online activities engaged millions. Yes MILLIONS. So we’d like to extend a humongous thank you to everyone who got involved. We’re really incredibly grateful and we hope we have done you proud too by raising awareness of climate change issues and potential solutions.

Cabot Annual Lecture

Over a thousand people signed up for our Annual Lecture this year, which outlined what we should be looking out for and paying attention to at COP26. We were delighted to have three external speakers: Mya-Rose Craig (Birdgirl), 19 year old British-Bangladeshi founder and President Black2Nature, naturalist, environmentalist, climate and race activist; Journalist Leo Hickman, Director and Editor of Carbon Brief; and Alyssa Gilbert, Director of Policy and Translation at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment and chair of the COP26 Universities Network. Watch the lecture below.

 

Incredible Caboteers

Academics

Apart from all the awesome environmental research that our Caboteers have been contributing to, they’ve also been on your radio and telly quite a lot this year. Our members appeared over 1000 times in the press and we reached 14, 821,429,500 people and that was just for our engagement in COP26! Consider our minds officially blown!

Professor Dan Lunt on BT Sport’s Playing Against the Clock programme. Watch here.

Our academics have also been involved in some great projects this year including bringing together voices from Small Island Developing states at the sharp end of climate change; an event on Extinction Rebellion and climate change activism; Bristol’s first pesticide amnesty and Waves of Change working on climate change with young people in coastal Cornish towns (see video below).

Within the core team we said a sad farewell to Professor Jemma Wadham and extended a big warm welcome to Professor Guy Howard who took over the reigns from Jemma as she moved on to an incredible role as chair at UiT Arctic University of Norway. Helen Thomas-Hughes also started as Director of the Cabot Masters in Global Environmental Challenges.

Students

It’s not just our academics who have accomplished a lot this year, our students have too. They have supported school children across the city by helping us to run a Mock COP26 and we helped 45 of them get up to Glasgow for COP26 so they could experience it and make their voices heard.

In September 2021, we were delighted to welcome our third cohort of students on our MScR in Global Environmental Challenges. This year, our student projects range from conservation and the deep sea, sustainable food systems, digital net zero and extreme heat – to name but a few!

This year also saw our MScR student Fanny Lehmann being awarded the very first Student Met Office Prize, for her outstanding thesis on “How is the global water cycle responding to climate change?”, supervised by Professor Jonathan Bamber.

We also had incredible outputs from our MScR students Lucy McCarthy, Dora Young, Lois Barton and Tilly Walker-Wood who produced content for us in the run up to COP26. Other members of the cohort co-created a public engagement activity for Festival of Nature.

Cabot Communicators

Our Cabot Communicators – a group of PhD students and postdocs who we train to communicate their environmental research – had a great year too! Here are some of their outputs:

#CabotNext10

Yep. We’re 10 YEARS OLD this year. Unfortunately, we were unable to hold our famous Cabot Celidh to celebrate due to Covid and the behemoth that was COP26, but our Cabot Communicator Olivia Reddy put together some lovely blogs for us to celebrate the last ten years and the next ten years by interviewing some of the key people in Cabot – the core Cabot Team and the leaders of our Research Themes. If you fancy finding out a bit more about where we came from, what inspires us and where we’re going, feel free to dive into these blogs.

We hope you will join us in celebrating not just our tenth anniversary but our community’s incredible achievements this year. We are in awe of their awesomeness and can’t wait to see what next year (and the next ten years!) will bring.

We hope you have a happy holiday and we’ll see you in the New Year.

Some of the Cabot Team. Left to right: Amanda Woodman-Hardy, Angus Morrice, Vicky Jones, Joanne Norris.

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This blog is written by Amanda Woodman-Hardy, Communications and Engagement Officer at the Cabot Institute for the Environment. Follow on Twitter at @Enviro_Mand.

 

 

 

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