UK Climate Resilience Champions based at Leeds
UKRI and Met Office have announced that Professor Suraje Dessai and Dr Kate Lonsdale, based at the University of Leeds, have been appointed to be the Champions for the UK Climate Resilience Programme.
As thought leaders for the programme, the Champions play a number of roles, including identifying research gaps, synthesising research outputs, and facilitating links across the research and user communities.
The four year £18.6 million programme will enhance the UK’s resilience to climate variability and change through interdisciplinary research and innovation on climate risk, adaptation and services, working with stakeholders and end-users to ensure the research is useful and usable.
Suraje Dessai has been Professor of Climate Change Adaptation at the University of Leeds since 2012. His research and teaching focuses on the management of climate change uncertainties, perception of climate risks and the science-policy interface in climate change impacts, adaptation and services.
Kate Lonsdale has worked on adaptation to a changing climate as a researcher, trainer, facilitator, and evaluator and in an advisory capacity for over 24 years in both developed and developing country contexts. She also has 15 years of experience in designing and facilitating participatory research processes, workshops and events.
The Champions will work alongside the Met Office delivery team to ensure good coordination with the Met Office research activities. The Met Office delivery team is led by Professor Jason Lowe, from the Met Office and University of Leeds, a specialist in using climate science to produce evidence to support both Mitigation and Adaptation.
The objectives of the Climate Resilience Programme are:
- Characterising and quantifying climate-related risks
- Managing climate-related risks through adaptation
- Co-producing climate services
The programme is led by UKRI (led by NERC) and the Met Office, with the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and will be delivered through a combination of open calls and directly commissioned research.
Contact: The UK Climate Resilience Champions, Suraje and Kate