Environmental responses to climate change
The impact of climate change is one of the biggest and most complicated challenges facing society today. We are developing a holistic climate change impact model to answer fundamental questions:
- How will the anticipated climate change affect our living environment, from our landscape to the oceans around us, from natural hazards to the quality and availability of water?
- How will these impacts, including our own responses, feed back to the processes of climate change?
Selected research
Sea level and coastal changeInformation on BGS research into and monitoring of coastal erosion, coastal behaviour and sea level change. Coastal erosion case studies.
Ice ages and ice sheetsUnderstanding how ice masses behave is one of the key challenges facing the scientific community.
Britain's periglacial legacy and glacigenic sedimentWhat effects did permafrost have on the near-surface geology in Britain? Research in Norfolk, UK.
Great Barrier Reef environmental changes expeditionThis expedition will collect cores from fossil coral reefs to improve our understanding of change in sea level during the deglaciation that followed the last major ice age some 20 000 to 10 000 years ago.
Glacier monitoring: BGS observatory at Virkisjökull, IcelandBGS has set up a long-term monitoring programme at Virkisjökull, part of the climatically sensitive Oraefajökull Ice Cap in south-east Iceland.
Evolution of upland landscapes — Talla Earth observatoryOur aim in this project is to understand processes of environmental change in an upland soil-geoscape developed on resistant metasedimentary rocks.
Related research
Climate change and geohazards Will flooding be more frequent or more severe? Will landslides or karst collapses be more frequent? Will the engineering of UK's infrastructure and housing be impacted by the shrinking and swelling of clay?
