What does the Government’s new Environment Bill mean for UK air quality?
The Government has introduced a new Environment Bill to Parliament to tackle the biggest environmental priorities of our time.
The transformative legislation will create legally-binding environmental targets and introduce measures to improve air and water quality, reduce plastic pollution, and restore habitats so plants and wildlife can thrive. In terms of air quality, the headline news is that the UK will set a new limit to reduce fine particulate matter known as PM2.5.
Why climate science needs to learn from risk assessment
Climate scientists need to spend more time considering all plausible future climate scenarios rather than just the most likely, argues Professor Rowan Sutton in a new paper published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
Professor Sutton, Director of Climate Science at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, says that scientists have not paid enough attention to two important issues; the current risks due to climate change, and the low-likelihood high-impact events which carry the highest risks.
Methane measurements in the Arctic Circle may be critical to controlling global temperature rise
A team of researchers are working to uncover the causes of a mysterious rise in atmospheric methane, which threatens to derail plans to limit global temperature rise.
Their latest measurement campaign took place in the Arctic Circle, where researchers have identified that melting permafrosts are one potential source of increasing methane emissions.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and emissions have been rising rapidly over the last ten years. Its warming effect on our climate is around 34 times greater than carbon dioxide over a one hundred year period.
Taking a closer look at Europe’s future winters
Wetter winters across northern Europe and drier winters across southern Europe are expected towards the end of this century. But the scale of these changes may be underestimated by some climate models, which currently operate at low-resolutions.
Tests using a higher-resolution climate model, which has the ability to take a closer look and capture weather-scale processes, shows stronger and more reliable changes in winter with climate change.