Shipping in Changing Climates is a multi-university, multidisciplinary consortium of leading UK academic institutions focused on addressing the interconnected research questions that arise from considering the shipping sector’s possible response over the next few decades due to changes in: climate (sea level rise, storm frequency), regulatory climate (mitigation and adaptation policy), and macroeconomic climate (increased trade, differing trade patterns, higher energy prices).

Building on RCUK Energy programme's substantial investment in this area already: including support for the High Seas project that was also based in Manchester, this research will provide crucial input into long-term strategic planning (commercial and policy) for shipping, in order to enable the sector to transition the next few decades with minimum disruption of the essential global services (trade, transport, economic growth, food and fuel security) that it provides.

The role of Tyndall Manchester (along with the UCL and the University of Southampton) is to investigate plausible future developments of international trade and resource availability to produce a suite of global scenarios for shipping demand and its drivers. This will be achieved by assessing: a) the direct impacts of climate change and mitigation policies on the shipping system (including polices aimed specifically at ships and ports, or climate impacts on shipping infrastructure); and, b) the equally important indirect impacts, such as the effect of energy system decarbonisation on the trade of fossil fuels, or climate impacts on key trading commodities. These will all be brought together through developing new, coherent, quantitatively and qualitatively derived shipping transport demand scenarios.

Duration

01 December 2013 to 31 May 2017

Funder

EPSRC

Other Information

http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/K039253/1

Image Credit: "952B4842-1" by Paulo Valdivieso is licensed under CC BY SA 2.0