Our site is using cookies to record anonymous visitor statistics and enhance your user experience.   OK | Find out more

Natural Environment Research Council Home
Skip to content

QUEST

QUEST Leader's New Year message

Prof I Colin Prentice,
24 January 2007

2006 saw several high-profile developments in the science and policy aspects of global change.

The publication of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (where Jo House, QUEST's science and policy officer, led the writing team for "Climate & Air Quality") has helped to popularize the concept of ecosystem services. This assessment vividly showed the extent to which human activities depend on, and yet in many aspects are compromising, the function of ecosystems. The ecosystem service concept has now become a keystone of UK environmental policy. It forms the basis for a planned QUEST Theme 3 project on vulnerability assessment (see below).

"Carbon cycle feedback" was the subject of an international project, C4MIP (coupled climate-carbon cycle model intercomparison project). C4MIP has been sponsored by AIMES (the IIGBP core project on Analysis, Integration and Modelling of the Earth System, which I co-chair) and led by Pierre Friedlingstein, who is also a PI of the new international QUEST project DESIRE (Dynamics of the Earth System and the Ice Ice Core Record). The headline finding of C4MIP was that there is a positive feedback. Global warming reduces the ability of terrestrial ecosystems to take up CO2. However the magnitude of this feedback proved to be alarmingly uncertain. Different models estimate the additional CO2 (at 2100) ranging from 20 to 200 ppm, and the additional warming from 0·1 to 1·5 degrees. This feedback needs better quantification, because it directly affects the relation between CO2 emissions and concentrations. QUEST plans to invest up to £700k in a project that will aim to reduce this uncertainty using a battery of numerical techniques and carbon cycle measurements.

Climate change has meanwhile been moving briskly up the UK and international policy agenda as well as being constantly in the news. A major event was the publication in October of the Stern review, for which a number of QUEST scientists were consulted. The Stern review drew attention to the potential large economic damages from "high-end" climate change projections, and quantified the (more modest) costs associated with a global mitigation effort. The Stern review has already provoked extensive debate, and defined key science and economics issues around climate change.

Many QUEST scientists have been involved as authors and/or reviewers in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), due for publication in the coming months. IPCC Working Group 2 has been able to draw on the first high-profile publication from QUEST, by Marko Scholze, Wolfgang Knorr, Nigel Arnell (Tyndall Centre) and myself, published last year in PNAS. The paper presented a multi-model "risk analysis" showing the probability of changes in freshwater supply, fire frequency and biomes for different degrees of global warming, based on the ensemble of climate model outputs produced for Working Group 1.

In forward planning for the next IPCC assessment, AIMES and the climate modelling community as represented by the WCRP Working Group on Coupled Models (WGCM) have been considering a new approach to climate (and carbon cycle) model projections. An emerging consensus separates high-resolution model runs for the period up to 2025, mainly to inform adaptation policy and mitigation issues surrounding atmospheric components with shorter lifetimes than CO2, from century-long runs focused on pathways to CO2 stabilization at different levels. The new century-long runs will use land and ocean carbon cycle models, both "off-line" and coupled to climate models, to estimate the time course of emissions consistent with stabilizing CO2 and climate. This separation of time scales, it is hoped, will dispel the widespread confusion about the difference between scientific uncertainty (the major cause of differences between model projections to 2025) and longer-term policy targets.

These developments all illustrate the fact that QUEST research operates in a highly dynamic social context. The funding scheme for QUEST has aspects of built-in flexibility which allow, for example, working groups to be set up on "new" topics, engaging stakeholders as well as academics, and fundamental science and modelling developments to be closely connected to their near-term uses.

Project news

Most of QUEST's planned major investments are already in place, or nearly so. Over 150 scientists are now involved in QUEST, including a broad representation of research institutes as well as universities. This number is expected to grow further in 2007. The core team is developing excellent working relations with the current projects, through direct participation of designated core team members in projects and frequent web-based reporting and feedback. These mechanisms are working well and they help to ensure that opportunities are taken and difficulties resolved.

The diagrams (opens page from external QUEST website) summarize the current (or soon-to-be current) projects under the Theme headings, which broadly correspond with QUEST's "big questions" as posed in the Science Plan. In summary:

  1. How important are various biosphere feedbacks for climate change this century? (Theme 1 projects, QUEST Earth System Modelling, and the Advanced Fellowship.)
  2. How is atmospheric composition naturally regulated on time scales up to a million years? (Theme 2 projects and DESIRE.)
  3. How much climate change is "dangerous"? (Theme 3 project, planned to start in 2007.)

Question 3 may be the hardest of all to answer convincingly and, of course, it is not just a natural-science question. The project planned under this heading aims to quantify key vulnerabilities of ecosystem services worldwide corresponding to different degrees of climate change this century. The work will include an attempt to quantify adaptations to climate change, so as to assess the vulnerability of various human activities in a meaningful way.

Theme 3 was originally given the very general title "Consequences of global environmental change for the sustainable use of resources". Question 3 obviously belongs under this heading. So does this one:

  • How much climate change could be avoided by managing the biosphere?

Avoiding deforestation, forestry plantation, and energy production from biomass are all included in the concept of biosphere management. This is now the subject of an Invitation to Tender for two new QUEST projects: a top-down global assessment of near-term possibilities, and a bottom-up analysis of the effectiveness and impacts of a specific "Kyoto project".

The final tranches of major QUEST project funding are (a) the Earth System Processes and Prediction (ESPP) grant round, for which NERC will soon be evaluating the outline bids, and (b) potentially, an Invitation to Tender for the UK node of the Earth System Atlas. This Invitation is expected to appear in a few months' time after the planning group (Jo House, myself, and Andy Shaw from DEFRA) have consulted with a wide variety of potential user groups about the desired content, format and user interface for the Atlas. The activity builds on the fact that the US node at Lehigh University is running, with funding from NSF, and will soon be beta-testing the data set review process. US node staff are working with the e-science centre at Reading on technical aspects of the Atlas.

Organization news

A number of changes in the organization of QUEST have been made in order to streamline programme management and to further improve communications, both with NERC and with the broader, emerging UK Earth System Science community.

  • A newly constituted QUEST Programme Board will meet twice a year to review progress and plans. Chaired by Steven Wilson (representing the Chief Executive), this will include myself as "supplier" and representatives of NERC and government as "stakeholders". The Board will act as a formal channel of communication between QUEST and NERC and will replace the previous ad hoc decision-making and reporting arrangements.
  • Professor Kathy Whaler, University of Edinburgh, has been appointed as SISB representative on the QUEST International Advisory Board.
  • Sarah Cornell has taken on a new part-time role as Science Manager, an arrangement which allows me more time for science and strategy. Cat Downy has a new full-time role as management assistant. When not doing management, Sarah continues to do integrative science! The QUEST Management Plan is expected to be finished and available this month thanks to Sarah's and Cat's efforts.
  • Sarah also leads a Co-ordination Task Force, including experienced co-ordinators from other NERC programmes, to help define and apply best practice in community liaison and outreach.
  • Jo has convened a UK Stakeholder Group comprising people from various government departments and NGOs who have shown strong interest in the work of QUEST. A successful first meeting of this group took place last autumn at DEFRA. The group will meet annually. This group of people has already made major contributions to QUEST planning, especially through participation in the "gaps and opportunities" consultation which led to the formulation of the ESPP grant round and the Working Groups, and in defining priorities for the biosphere management activity.

A few other developments are worth mentioning. The Data Management Working Group, chaired by Wolfgang Knorr, has now published QUEST's data policy. A contract is being set up with BADC to act as the operational arm of QUEST's data strategy. As a key part of the data strategy, QUEST and the Hadley Centre are planning to specify new Quality Assurance Benchmarks for Earth System Modelling. These will include observational data sets describing key features of atmospheric composition and the marine and terrestrial biosphere, as well as the traditional climate measures.

The first virtual meeting of the Integration Team took place. This was a valuable meeting and represents a great way to avoid unnecessary CO2 emissions! Technical glitches however prevented a couple of members from joining in, and Ian Woodward's head disappeared after a few minutes. We hope QUEST PI's will now put pressure on their local organizations to make sure the Access Grid facilities really work. We plan to hold these meetings three times a year, with the next one scheduled for 9 March.

Cluster news

The 400-node QUEST Cluster, supplied by Clustervision who won the tender, is housed by the University of Bristol at the Merchant Venturers Building near QUEST HQ. The system is close to operation, in fact the company estimates that it will be up and running by the end of this week. A testing and benchmarking period will follow during the next two weeks.

We would like each QUEST project that plans to use this facility to designate one user of the cluster. These users collectively will constitute a user group, chaired by Paul Valdes, University of Bristol, who has overseen the planning and installation of the system. Users may port code to the system soon but should bear in mind that "full service" will not begin until after February 20, when the software engineer, Greg Tourte, starts work.

Working groups news

Ten working groups have been promised funding for first meetings this spring, and four more which can start this autumn subject to the availability of funds.

Core team news

As well as the changes on the programme management side, Pru Foster has taken on an additional part-time, EU-funded role co-ordinating biosphere modelling activities in the HYMN (Hydrogen, Methane and Nitrous Oxide) project, which has important potential synergies with the QUEST Theme 1 and Earth System Modelling projects. Pru continues to do creative visualization programming for QUEST. Wolfgang has moved house to Bristol, and Marko's son Aron was born! Expected visitors in 2007 include Peter Baines (ex-CSIRO) and Renato Spahni, who brings a Swiss NSF fellowship. Peter will be working on aspects of the global hydrological cycle and will contribute to the working group on that topic; Renato on the causes of methane variations during Dansgaard-Oeschger events, in collaboration with DESIRE.

Marko has a stake in a new EU project (IMECC) where his contribution will be to the design of an optimal network for CO2 concentration measurements. He also holds a grant on behalf of QUEST from NERC's International Opportunity Fund. This grant supports the AIMES Young Scientists Network (YSN) by funding young UK scientists to participate in YSN events, and short research visits by young scientists from other countries to institutions participating in QUEST. So far, visits have been funded from this grant for Cassandra Rowe from Australia (to Bristol) and Mao Jiafu from China (to Sheffield).

The OSC-ASM

The combined Open Science Conference and Annual Science Meeting in Oxford, March 26-29, is the next big QUEST event. We hope that the overwhelming majority of QUEST-funded researchers, including PDRAs and Ph.D. students, will attend both, with the ASM beginning before and continuing after the OSC. We also hope that many other people doing related science will be present at and contribute to the OSC. This is planned to be a major community-building event for Earth System Science in the UK, so please register, as soon as possible, and (if you wish) submit an abstract for a talk or poster. See the external Quest website for details.

Note that QUEST-funded scientists will be fully reimbursed (through the University of Bristol) for their travel and subsistence in connection with the OSC and ASM. This invitation is further extended to any member of the Board, the Integration Team, the Scientific Liaison Group, the Stakeholder Group, the Data Management Working Group, and the Co-ordination Task Force. The International Advisory Board will once again be attending the OSC and will make their third annual report on QUEST's progress. This time, NERC's Mid-Term Review Board for QUEST (chaired by David Carson) will also be attending and reporting. The Mid-Term Review will evaluate progress and decide on core team priorities and funds for the remainder of the programme.