Annex 4
Memorandum from the Natural Environment
Research Council (NERC)
BACKGROUND
1. The Natural Environment Research Council
(NERC) funds and carries out impartial scientific research in
the sciences of the environment. NERC trains the next generation
of independent environmental scientists. Its priority research
areas are: Earth's life-support systems, climate change and sustainable
economies.
2. NERC's research centres are: the British
Antarctic Survey (BAS), the British Geological Survey (BGS), the
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) and the Proudman Oceanographic
Laboratory (POL). NERC also works with 15 collaborative centres[106].
COMMENTS
3. The Committee will recall NERC's submission
earlier this year to its inquiry into "Climate change and
water security". On that occasion, NERC's evidence included
input from BGS, CEH and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change
Research. On this occasion, the Tyndall Centre is submitting evidence
separately, and the purpose of this Annex is mainly to highlight
other relevant programmes supported by NERC.
4. NERC's strategy document "Science
for a Sustainable Future 2002-07"[107]
sets out three priority areas, one of which is "Climate change—predicting
and mitigating the impacts". Earlier this year, NERC's Science
and Innovation Strategy Board identified six priority themes for
potential future investment[108],
one of them again being "Climate Change" (focusing on
solar variability and the role of aerosols), and others also being
relevant, for example "Environment and Health" and "Sustainable
Water Management". NERC continues to support the programmes
referred to in our evidence to the earlier inquiry, including
COAPEC (Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Processes and European Climate)
and RAPID (Rapid Climate Change).
5. Other NERC programmes[109]
which are contributing to our knowledge about the earth system
and climate change include Core-Strategic Measurements for Atmospheric
Science (COSMAS), Clouds, Water Vapour and Climate (CWVC), Quantifying
and Understanding the Earth System (QUEST), the UK Surface-Ocean/Lower
Atmosphere Study (SOLAS), and the Upper Troposphere—Lower
Stratosphere Ozone Programme (UTLS OZONE). Many of them involve
the NERC Centres for Atmospheric Science (NCAS), including the
British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC) mentioned in Annex 2 at
paragraph 8. The work of NCAS is complemented by that of other
Collaborative Centres such as the Centre of Observation of Air-Sea
Interactions and Fluxes (CASIX) and the Centre for Terrestrial
Carbon Dynamics (CTCD).
6. NERC also supports research into renewable
energy through its coordinating involvement in the cross-Council
Towards a Sustainable Energy Economy (TSEC) Programme[110],
as part of which it has been instrumental in setting up the UK
Energy Research Centre (UKERC)[111].
It is also involved in EPSRC's SUPERGEN initiative. These programmes
and initiatives are described in the introductory text.
7. All the NERC Research Centres have research
programmes looking at issues relevant to climate change. The BGS
programmes include: Coastal Geoscience and Global Change, and
Sustainable Energy and Geophysical Surveys; the latter includes
study of the potential of carbon sequestration. One of the BAS
programmes examines past climatic changes to provide data which
can be used to test the validity of climate-prediction models[112].
CEH's programmes include "Climate Change", "Water"
and "Sustainable Economies"[113],
and POL has particular expertise in the relationship between climate
and sea levels[114].
8 October 2004
106 www.nerc.ac.uk Back
107
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/publications/strategicplan/stratplan02.pdf Back
108
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/currentscipriorities.shtml Back
109
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/programmes/ Back
110
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/programmes/sustenergy/tsecao2.shtml Back
111
http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/ Back
112
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/BAS-Science/index.html Back
113
http://www.ceh.ac.uk/science-topics/ Back
114
http://www.pol.ac.uk/home/research/ Back
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