date: Wed Feb 6 15:55:25 2002 from: Mike Hulme subject: letter for Julian Dowdeswell to: lc301@cam.ac.uk Dear Professor Dowdeswell, It seems I have just missed you and since you are away for a while I should contact you this way. You may have picked up that the Tyndall Centre, with the FCO, is convening a one-day symposium on 8 May addressing strategic issues concerned with climate change and the Arctic from a UK perspective (see spec. outline below). This ball started with the FCO and via NERC ended with us. We picked it up because of our integrating role re. inter-disciplinary research on climate change and we see agenda-setting one strand of our activity. We would like you to be involved in the day (Liz Morris and Steve Albon are helping us arrange the day) and I wonder whether you are available to accept one of two possible roles: - following an FCO minister and Bob Correll from ACIA, we would like a scene-setting overview on the different dimensions of why the Arctic is important re. climate change and re. the UK. Our visiting research director - John Schellnhuber from PIK - cannot make the day, but we would ask whether you are able to make this presentation (20-30 minutes). It would need to raise both science and policy elements, and both natural and social science elements. If you are not able to do this, would you recommend someone else in the UK? - or else, if not the above, to chair an afternoon session where we have 4 short contributions - Cattle, Callaghan, Nuttall, Bentham - on different dimensions of the issue. Sorry I can't send an outline of the day but attachments are banned apparently! I hope you can let me have your initial thoughts before you return. Thanks, Mike _______________________________________________________________ Climate Change and the Arctic and its implications for the UK: Towards a New UK Research Agenda Wednesday 8 May 2002, Norwich The effects of climate change are widely anticipated to be particularly pronounced in the Arctic, not only on the regions environment but also on Arctic resources, human-health and other social issues, and on various economic activities. Furthermore, biogeochemical feedbacks and interactions within the climate system mean that regional impacts are likely to lead to wide-ranging changes that affect other regions of the world, including the UK. For these reasons the UK has been actively engaged in Arctic research for many years, even though it is not one of the eight arctic-rim nations of the Arctic Council. With the scientific evidence for present and future climate change, and its consequences, strengthened through the recent publication of the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there is a timely need to provide useful and reliable information to governments, organisations and the peoples of the Arctic region in order to better support policy-making processes. This has lead to a number of UK scientists becoming involved in the design and execution of the international collaborative Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) initiative. The objectives of this one day agenda-setting symposium are: · to bring together key members of the UKs Arctic research and policy-making communities and to raise awareness of the work of the ACIA and the UKs engagement in this initiative; · to identify important knowledge gaps and to determine the extent to which the UK can help to address these deficiencies through integrated trans-disciplinary research; and · to prioritise the UKs future research effort in topics related to climate change and the Arctic. This event is being organised in association with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. ***************************************************************************** Dr Mike Hulme Executive Director Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ UK tel: +44 (0)1603 593162 fax: +44 (0)1603 593901 mobile: 07801 842 597 email: m.hulme@uea.ac.uk web site: [1]www.tyndall.ac.uk secretary: Vanessa McGregor on tel: 593900 email: v.mcgregor@uea.ac.uk ************************************************************************************ The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research .... integrated research for sustainable responses .... The Tyndall Centre is a research initiative funded by three UK Research Councils - NERC, ESRC, EPSRC - with support from the DTI. ************************************************************************************