Data-Driven Climate Knowledge:
Empowering Solutions

The University of East Anglia has sustained a strong international reputation generating and interpreting climate data over the past 50 years. Our climate datasets are used by organisations across the world, facilitating thousands of new research studies every year.

UEA is notable for the range, high quality, and longevity of our climate data. The diverse portfolio of observational datasets we generate and contribute to span the physics, chemistry and biology of the atmosphere and oceans, through to the ecological and societal systems that are entwined with the climate.

From our Climatic Research Unit’s pioneering work on the global temperature record, using instrumental and palaeoclimate records to understand human-caused climate change and natural climate variability, to contributions to important international initiatives including the Global Carbon Budget and Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT), and the Tyndall Centre’s work informing society’s transition to a sustainable low-carbon and climate-resilient future, we have a strong track record of producing and utilising data to help shape a global response to climate change.

We develop novel predictive models to generate future climate projections and are translating these into their implications for society, quantifying impacts such as those on human health, biodiversity, and the economy. We put usable knowledge of the future in the hands of the people who need it most, suggesting potential changes that will help us mitigate, or adapt, in response to the risks arising from a changing climate.

Our interdisciplinary approach allows us to discern how people understand and engage with climate science data, and the important role that narratives, constructed from the data, play in providing accurate depictions of possible future scenarios.

UEA are important contributors in the field of Environmental Social Science, which seeks to explain diverse socio-cultural processes that are connected to climate impacts and mitigation, and to detail the functioning of climate-related human institutions across the social, political, and economic spectrum.

We employ a range of methodologies in public data collection including interview and focus groups, which offer insight into the ways diverse communities and stakeholders experience the impacts arising from a changing climate, and how they interpret or respond to scientific knowledge. New frontiers in qualitative research are also central to our work, including creative methods that give voice and expression to diverse stakeholders, and participatory and co-produced methods that see those communities affected by climate change play a central role in shaping the focus of research.

Our research in this area has led to long-term and transformative impacts on science, society, public policy, and industry across climate change, energy and innovation domains.

Our Climate Data Research

A diverse range of research is taking place in the Climate Data space. You can read about some of the exciting projects we are working on and find out more about the researchers who are involved below.