University of East Anglia

About: University of East Anglia is a education organization based out in Norwich, Norfolk, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Climate change. The organization has 13250 authors who have published 37504 publications receiving 1669060 citations. The organization is also known as: UEA.

Are flood victims more concerned about climate change than other people? The role of direct experience in risk perception and behavioural response

Abstract: Climate change is a threat to human health and life, both now and in the future. Despite this, studies show that the public typically do not consider the issue a priority concern or a direct, personal threat. Furthermore, few are taking any preventive or protective action. Previous studies identify direct experience as a major influence on risk perception, learning and action. Drawing on such evidence, this paper focuses on the intangibility of climate change as a key impediment to personal engagement and explores whether relevant experiences of flooding and air pollution influence individuals' knowledge, attitudes, risk perception and behavioural responses to climate change. Perhaps surprisingly, interviews and a survey conducted in the south of England indicate flood victims differ very little from other participants in their understanding of and responses to climate change, but that experience of air pollution does significantly affect perceptions of and behavioural responses to climate change. Air pollution victims are no more likely to cite pollution as a cause of climate change than non‐victims; but they do have higher pro‐environmental values. Respondents with these values are significantly more likely to consider climate change a salient risk and to take action in response to it. Therefore the relationship between air pollution experience and responses to climate change may be indirect and mediated by environmental values. The paper concludes by highlighting implications of this research for developing climate change policies and strategies for public engagement.

High-resolution palaeoclimatology of the last millennium: a review of current status and future prospects:

Abstract: This review of late-Holocene palaeoclimatology represents the results from a PAGES/CLIVAR Intersection Panel meeting that took place in June 2006. The review is in three parts: the principal high-resolution proxy disciplines (trees, corals, ice cores and documentary evidence), emphasizing current issues in their use for climate reconstruction; the various approaches that have been adopted to combine multiple climate proxy records to provide estimates of past annual-to-decadal timescale Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures and other climate variables, such as large-scale circulation indices; and the forcing histories used in climate model simulations of the past millennium. We discuss the need to develop a framework through which current and new approaches to interpreting these proxy data may be rigorously assessed using pseudo-proxies derived from climate model runs, where the `answer' is known. The article concludes with a list of recommendations. First, more raw proxy data are required from the diverse disciplines and from more locations, as well as replication, for all proxy sources, of the basic raw measurements to improve absolute dating, and to better distinguish the proxy climate signal from noise. Second, more effort is required to improve the understanding of what individual proxies respond to, supported by more site measurements and process studies. These activities should also be mindful of the correlation structure of instrumental data, indicating which adjacent proxy records ought to be in agreement and which not. Third, large-scale climate reconstructions should be attempted using a wide variety of techniques, emphasizing those for which quantified errors can be estimated at specified timescales. Fourth, a greater use of climate model simulations is needed to guide the choice of reconstruction techniques (the pseudo-proxy concept) and possibly help determine where, given limited resources, future sampling should be concentrated.

Global carbon budget 2014

Abstract: Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe data sets and a methodology to quantify all major components of the global carbon budget, including their uncertainties, based on the combination of a range of data, algorithms, statistics, and model estimates and their interpretation by a broad scientific community. We discuss changes compared to previous estimates, consistency within and among components, alongside methodology and data limitations. CO 2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production (E FF ) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, respectively, while emissions from land-use change (E LUC ), mainly deforestation, are based on combined evidence from land-cover-change data, fire activity associated with deforestation, and models. The global atmospheric CO 2 concentration is measured directly and its rate of growth (G ATM ) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The mean ocean CO 2 sink (S OCEAN ) is based on observations from the 1990s, while the annual anomalies and trends are estimated with ocean models. The variability in S OCEAN is evaluated with data products based on surveys of ocean CO 2 measurements. The global residual terrestrial CO 2 sink (S LAND ) is estimated by the difference of the other terms of the global carbon budget and compared to results of independent dynamic global vegetation models forced by observed climate, CO 2 , and land-cover-change (some including nitrogen–carbon interactions). We compare the mean land and ocean fluxes and their variability to estimates from three atmospheric inverse methods for three broad latitude bands. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ, reflecting the current capacity to characterise the annual estimates of each component of the global carbon budget. For the last decade available (2004–2013), E FF was 8.9 ± 0.4 GtC yr −1 , E LUC 0.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr −1 , G ATM 4.3 ± 0.1 GtC yr −1 , S OCEAN 2.6 ± 0.5 GtC yr −1 , and S LAND 2.9 ± 0.8 GtC yr −1 . For year 2013 alone, E FF grew to 9.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr −1 , 2.3% above 2012, continuing the growth trend in these emissions, E LUC was 0.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr −1 , G ATM was 5.4 ± 0.2 GtC yr −1 , S OCEAN was 2.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr −1 and S LAND was 2.5 ± 0.9 GtC yr −1 . G ATM was high in 2013, reflecting a steady increase in E FF and smaller and opposite changes between S OCEAN and S LAND compared to the past decade (2004–2013). The global atmospheric CO 2 concentration reached 395.31 ± 0.10 ppm averaged over 2013. We estimate that E FF will increase by 2.5% (1.3–3.5%) to 10.1 ± 0.6 GtC in 2014 (37.0 ± 2.2 GtCO 2 yr −1 ), 65% above emissions in 1990, based on projections of world gross domestic product and recent changes in the carbon intensity of the global economy. From this projection of E FF and assumed constant E LUC for 2014, cumulative emissions of CO 2 will reach about 545 ± 55 GtC (2000 ± 200 GtCO 2 ) for 1870–2014, about 75% from EF FF and 25% from E LUC . This paper documents changes in the methods and data sets used in this new carbon budget compared with previous publications of this living data set (Le Quere et al., 2013, 2014). All observations presented here can be downloaded from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (doi:10.3334/CDIAC/GCP_2014).

Roadmap on structured light

Abstract: Structured light refers to the generation and application of custom light fields. As the tools and technology to create and detect structured light have evolved, steadily the applications have begun to emerge. This roadmap touches on the key fields within structured light from the perspective of experts in those areas, providing insight into the current state and the challenges their respective fields face. Collectively the roadmap outlines the venerable nature of structured light research and the exciting prospects for the future that are yet to be realized.