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Media enquiries
For the past 50 years scientists from the Climatic Research Unit have featured in the international media highlighting the latest scientific developments in the field of climate change. Please direct all media enquiries to the UEA media centre.
News and events
Interactive Wildfire Atlas now available
Access the Wildfire Atlas from the CRU Data pageAugust 2024
Matt Jones and Esther Brambleby published our interactive wildfire atlas to coincide with the publication of the inaugural State of Wildfires 2023-2024 report...
UEA academic receives award from the Royal Meteorological Society
Read moreMay 2024
Daniel Skinner, Senior Research Associate based in the Climatic Research Unit, School of Environmental Sciences has been named the newest recipient of The Malcolm Walker Award for New Environmental...
50 Years of UEA's Climatic Research Unit
Read moreMarch 2022
Professor Tim Osborn, Research Director of CRU:
In 2022 we celebrate UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) turning 50! I am looking forward to a diverse range of exciting celebratory events to mark this important year for CRU, which is widely recognised as one of the world's leading institutions concerned with the study of climate change.
National Contribution to Warming
Read moreFebruary 2023
Our collaborative research has generated a new database, revealing how countries have contributed to global warming through their emissions of key greenhouse gases since 1850. Read this full article at National Contribution to Warming.
CRU at Norwich Science Festival
February 2023
Tours of the Climate Mural are on 17 February.
As well as this, Emily Wallis and Sarah Wilson Kemsley of CRU are running the “Norwich Climate Explorers” stand on the 17th February. The event takes a look back at Norwich’s historical events, set to the backdrop of the CRU temperature time series, instead of time as the public will be used to. We hope to demonstrate a range of different tools that scientists have used to construct the historical time series (i.e., from thermometers to ice cores). Alongside looking back, we take a look forward. An aerial view of a neighbourhood representing the Norwich of Tomorrow can be built upon by the public using play-doh to envisage a climate-conscious neighbourhood. We are hoping this might look like a neighbourhood filled with play-doh solar panels, trees, and bike lanes; though who knows what creations we might end up seeing. This is all set to a backdrop of the CRU temperature time series, a sample of climate projections, and the climate stripes.
Observing and Explaining Climate Change
June 2022
CRU’s work to produce a record of how the world’s temperature was changing began in 1978 and reached a particular milestone with the creation of the first combined land and marine temperature record in 1986 (the precursor to the current HadCRUT dataset). This record demonstrates unequivocally that the globe has warmed since 1850, and provides the basis for research that aims to explain the causes of this warming. CRU started to explore “fingerprint” methods to assess how the observed patterns of climate change match those that can be attributed to particular causes. By the mid-1990s, an international research team, including CRU, was able to detect the fingerprint of human-caused climate change. This finding has been strengthened ever since, as climate change emerges ever more strongly from the background natural variability.
This research meeting will explore the development of global instrumental records of climate change – including, but not limited to, CRU’s seminal contribution – and how they are used in the detection and attribution of climate change. Talks will cover both the earlier developments as well as the state-of-the-art research.
Venue: Thomas Paine Study Centre Lecture Theatre
Date: Tuesday 7 June, 16:00-18:00
Speakers:Phil Jones (Climatic Research Unit, School of Environmental Sciences,UEA, Norwich, UK)
Dr Kate Willett (Met Office, Exeter, UK)
Ben Santer (Formerly at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, USA)
Kasia Tokarska (Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zürich, Switzerland)
Climate Dynamics
June 2022
CRU’s work has always included research into the dynamical processes that govern the expression of climate change on a regional scale and on the hydrological cycle. This aspect has, however, greatly expanded in the last decade of CRU’s 50-year existence, so that it is now a central focus of many of its staff and students. We consider many aspects of climate dynamics, including large-scale climate variability, monsoons, ocean-ice shelf interactions, the role of clouds in amplifying climate change, the warming contrast between land and sea – and even the climates of Earth-like exoplanets.
This research meeting will explore many facets of climate dynamics to which CRU’s research has made significant contributions towards improved understanding. Details TBC.
Venue: Lecture Theatre 2
Date: Tuesday 28 June, 16:30-17:30
Speakers:Dave Thompson (School of Environmental Sciences, UEA, Norwich, UK)
Jessica Vial (LMD/IPSL, Paris, France)
Natasha Senior (Climatic Research Unit, School of Environmental Sciences, UEA, Norwich, UK)
Lamb Memorial prize awarded to Chris Donaldson
November 2013
Congratulations to Chris Donaldson for winning the Hubert H. Lamb Memorial Prize for 2013.
Chris's dissertation "Private flood mitigation and individual motivation: an analysis of a flood-prone community in Great Yarmouth" (under the supervision of Declan Conway) was judged the best in the year.
Mrs. Moira Lamb, widow of Professor Hubert Lamb, founder of the Climatic Research Unit, kindly donated an annual prize for the best dissertation from the MSc in Climate Change. Find out more about our MSc here.
Moira Lamb
It is with deep sadness that members of the Climatic Research Unit, present and past, have learned of the death of Moira Lamb, the widow of the CRU's founder, Hubert Lamb. She died peacefully at her home in Norfolk following a short illness.
Moira was a constant and dear friend to us all: she was guest of honour at the CRU's 40th Anniversary celebrations in 2012, and again in September 2013 at the Special Meeting of the Royal Meteorological Society to mark the centenary of her husband, held at the University of East Anglia. Her lively and astute interest in climate science was apparent as she listened to the presentations of current research on themes initiated by Hubert, and when viewing the archives of his research in historical climatology.
Moira endeared herself to all who met her. She was a model of courtesy and good humour, but above all, it was the warmth and generosity of her personality for which we shall remember her.
Avoiding overconfidence in climate projections
July 2014
Adapting to the effects of man-made climate change in this century requires a careful assessment of the uncertainties inherent in model projections of any related impacts. In a paper out in Nature today a group of authors including one from CRU suggest that projections of when the signal of climate change will emerge from the background noise of climate variability- the ‘time of emergence’- that were made in a paper last year in Nature are overconfident; in other words their projections do not take account of the uncertainties inherent in climate projections properly. Nature have also commissioned a News and Views piece on the article here.
Winter is coming: British weather set to become more unsettled
September 2014
British winters are becoming increasingly volatile due to extreme variations in pressure over the North Atlantic according to scientists from the University of Sheffield and the University of East Anglia (UEA).
New global temperature visualisations
January 2020
A new set of visualisations of our global temperature datasets are now available, updated each month. They show temperature changes from our HadCRUT4 (land and oceans) and CRUTEM4 (land only) datasets, which we produce in collaboration with the Met Office.
The graphs show global, Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere temperature changes on timescales from years to decades, as well the current year so far.
Research reveals ‘topsy turvy’ ocean circulation on distant planets
Read moreApril 2016
The salt levels of oceans on distant Earth-like planets could have a major effect on their climates – according to new research from the Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of East Anglia.
Poor countries to bear brunt of climate change
Read moreMay 2016
Many of the world’s poorest countries are expected to experience daily heat extremes due to climate change sooner than wealthier nations – according to research from an international team including UEA.
Tim Osborn to take over leadership of CRU
January 2017
Prof Timothy Osborn has been announced as the next Research Director of the Climatic Research Unit, UEA’s world-leading climate research centre.