Green the holidays. Eat your Christmas tree.

http://www.treehugger.com/lawn-garden/green-holidays-eat-your-christmas-tree.html
Sami Grover

Replanting a live tree is one of the most popular suggestions for getting a greener Christmas tree.

But what if you didn't just replant your tree? What if you ate it too?

In a special holiday episode, John Kohler of Growing Your Greens suggests several options if you really want to eat your tree. Firstly, he reminds us that pine needles are actually edible, although they are pretty much just a famine food. There are, however, other options for live, edible trees to choose from. A stone pine, for example, will eventually grow up to give you pine nuts. And many people have started using specially pruned rosemary bushes as a sustainable alternative to traditional trees.

True, neither a stone pine nor a rosemary bush are likely to provide massive amounts of nutrition. But the real idea here—as John himself explains—is to always think in terms of reuse before you think of recycling. If you have gone the route of a traditional, cut tree, then do be sure to chip it and compost it. Ultimately, once you start growing in the compost you get, you'll be eating your Christmas tree too.

Build a home in four HOURS: Engineer believes his £10,500 flat pack house could solve the UK's looming housing crisis

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2524624/Engineer-believes-QB2-flat-pack-house-solve-UKs-looming-housing-crisis.html
By SAM WEBB

An engineer has created what he believes is a solution to the UK’s looming housing crisis - a three-storey flat pack home.

Dr Mike Page has created the QB2 ‘cube house’, which is 10ft (3m) tall and 13ft (4m) wide and can sleep up to two people.

He says the house is as easy to build as 'an Ikea Billy bookcase' and takes just four hours to erect.

THE CUBE HOUSE: WHAT DO YOU GET?

• The building is around 10ft (3m)-high, 10ft-wide and 13ft (4m) deep.
• The bedroom contains a full-sized double bed.
• There is also a 4m-long galley bathroom - complete with a full-sized shower, sink and toilet which uses a composting toilet.
• A fully functional kitchen with hob, fridge freezer, combination microwave oven.
• A dining table which can be stowed to make room for a four-seater sofa.
• A two-seater sofa and two ottomans that can be reconfigured for 4-person dining/sitting or two-person lounging.
• Low-energy lighting and appliances (including a TV and washing machine)
• Mechanical heat-recovery ventilation.
• Very efficient heating and hot water using an optional air-source heat pump.
• Solar panels on the roof providing power to LED lighting.

Despite the cube’s compact dimensions it crams in a lounge, spiral staircase, kitchen, full-size bathroom and bedroom which are spread over three floors.

It achieves this through ingenious internal design, such as a bookcase that doubles as a mini spiral staircase.

The QB2 will go on the market early next year and range between £10,500 to £45,000. 

It does not require planning permission because it is under 13ft (4m) in height.

Dr Page said: 'The QB2 is practical and fits together easily. If someone can put up an Ikea Billy bookcase then they can put this up.

'It goes together like flat-pack furniture, although when a customer buys it they will get the finished product and won’t have to put it together themselves.

'It takes around four hours to put the cube together, however it would obviously take longer when you add I’m the furniture, it depends how quickly you work.

'Most of the furniture inside is from Ikea, which I guess does coincidentally link in with how easy the QB2 is to put together.

'Inside the QB2 there is a lot of practicability, with things such as the dining table being able to move while still attached to the wall, giving more room to move around and also lounge on the sofa.

'The QB2 has everything a normal home has, except it is all scaled down, however, there is still enough room for people, with a double bed as an available feature.'

He added: 'It is quick to put up too, we can build the shell in under four hours, although obviously it would take us longer to add everything in, including the kitchen.

'I think it is great, of course I would say that, but I really do think it is and it is the only one in the world.'

The building starts at £9,495 to build yourself or £10,305.00 for Bolton Buildings to erect it for you the basic option includes foundations, floor joists, ceiling joists and wall studs.

The second option costs between £22,839 and £27,208 and adds insulation to walls, floor and ceiling, roof covering and internal birch lining to walls.

The deluxe package costs up to £47,200 and Includes a shower, furniture, LED TV, kitchen appliances, bed and mattress, lights, switches, wiring, plumbing, triple-glazed windows, chesnut cladding, cork tile flooring, and is fully painted throughout.

The QB2 made its TV debut on George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces on Channel 4 last week.

Because of the small dimensions, the structure has the same planning status of a static caravan.

Dr Page, who teaches at the University of Hertfordshire, decided to make the cube in order to teach people how they could help the environment.

He said: 'I used to be an engineer and I was looking to encourage people to be greener and make pro-environmental changes.

'I thought instead of telling people, I could show them.

'For example, if someone tells you that an LED light is better and explains why, you’ll probably go home and not do anything about it.

'However, when people would say "how is it better, and show me how", I could, all I had to do was flick a switch, it started as a way of encouraging people they could do what I have done.'

Are ideas to cool the planet realistic?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24033772
By Melissa Hogenboom

The deliberate large-scale manipulation of the Earth's environment, called geoengineering, could be one way to cool the Earth or help reduce levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

But scientists are aware that these technologies are in very early stages of development and remain untested on a global scale.

Although there are great risks in deliberately interfering with nature to cool the planet, some researchers say that if the concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere reach a critical stage, geoengineering might become the only way to take control of our climate.

On the other hand, others worry that having the technology to "reverse" climate change could be seen as a get-out-of-jail-free card and that more effort should be put on existing ways of reducing emissions.

Steve Rayner of the Oxford Geoengineering Programme, UK, says that there is no easy answer, but it would be "irresponsible for us not to explore the potential to understand the technologies as best we can".

"Throughout human history the technologies of one generation created problems for the next. We have to find some way to deal with that; it's part of the evolution of human society," he adds.

What is geoengineering?

Geoengineering refers to the deliberate large-scale manipulation of the Earth's environment to counteract climate change.

There are essentially two ways of doing this.

The first is called Solar Radiation Management (SRM) and involves reflecting more of the Sun's rays away from the planet back into space.

Cloud-whitening would aim to reflect more of the Sun's heat back into space

One proposed method of SRM involves putting sulphur aerosols into the high reaches of the atmosphere.

This mimics what occasionally occurs in nature when a powerful volcano erupts. For example,the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991injected huge volumes of sulphur into the stratosphere. The particles produced in subsequent reactions cooled the planet by about 0.5C over the next two years by reflecting sunlight back out to space.

Using SRM would only address the symptoms and does not tackle the issue of rising concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2).

That is what the second option would aim to address by removing the CO2 already present. A number of ways to do this have been proposed; these approaches are known as Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR).

This would tackle the root cause of the problem, but Prof Rayner says, it would be very slow to have any effect and would require extensive financial investment.

"The irony is the SRM is seen as being fast acting and has high leverage technically, but is probably the most difficult and distant prospect from a governance point of view."

Political dimensions

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has previously stated that geoengineering could provide important solutions to tackling climate change but it also says that more research is needed in the area. It remains to be seen what the latest IPCC report - known as AR5 - will have to say about the field.

A major report in 2009 by the UK's Royal Society also suggested that "CDR and SRM geoengineering methods should only be considered as part of a wider package of options for addressing climate change".

And while the idea of geoengineering seemed to have gained traction several years ago, proposals on a global scale have failed to take shape.

For many years now, an international agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, has set targets for industrialised countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. In 2012, the UN climate talks in Doha extended the protocol.

Prof Rayner sat on two previous IPCC assessment panels and believes such targets will be impossible to meet. He says that regardless of greenhouse gas reduction efforts, and even if supplemented by geoengineering technologies, some level of adaptation to climate change will be necessary.

"The geoengineering technologies are seen as potential additional tools in the kit for dealing with climate change, not as substitutes for either adaptation or greenhouse gas mitigation," he told BBC News.

He adds that documents compiled by the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) and the IPCC suggest that it will not be possible to meet the targets "without finding ways of removing carbon from the ambient air".

The proposed technologies

Solar radiation management (SRM)

• Albedo enhancement: Increasing the reflectivity of clouds or the land surface so that more of the Sun's heat is reflected back into space
• Space reflectors: Blocking a small proportion of sunlight before it reaches the Earth
• Stratospheric aerosols: Introducing small, reflective particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect some sunlight before it reaches the surface of the Earth

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR)

• Afforestation: Global-scale tree-planting efforts
• Biochar: Burning biomass (plant material) and burying it so that its carbon is locked up in the soil
• Bio-energy with carbon capture and sequestration: Growing biomass, burning it for energy and capturing and locking away the CO2 generated in the process
• Ambient air capture: Building machines that can remove CO2 directly from ambient air and store it elsewhere
• Ocean fertilisation: Adding nutrients to the ocean in selected locations to increase marine food production, which draws down CO2 from the atmosphere
• Enhanced weathering: Exposing large quantities of minerals that react with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and storing the resulting compounds in the oceans or soil
• Ocean alkalinity enhancement: Grinding up, dispersing, and dissolving rock types such as limestone, silicate, or calcium hydroxide in the ocean to increase its ability to store carbon and directly ameliorate ocean acidification

Source: Oxford Geoengineering Programme

The most scrutinised technology so far has been ocean fertilisation,which involves using iron to stimulate phytoplankton growth in the ocean, increasing the uptake of CO2.

One study, for example, has shown that about half of a phytoplankton (algae) bloom stimulated by iron sank to the deep sea, locking the carbon away on a potential timescale of centuries.

But another showed that little CO2 was taken up by the organisms and that the potential for iron fertilisation may depend strongly on the location where it is attempted.

And some schemes have attracted controversy: In July 2012, for example, 100 tonnes of iron sulphate was deposited into the Pacific Ocean, off Canada's west coast, in an attempt to help restore salmon stocks there. The move outraged environmentalists opposed to ocean fertilisation.

While the idea continues to have its adherents, John Shepherd from the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton, UK, who also chaired the 2009 Royal Society report, is doubtful about the benefits.

"Ocean fertilisation involves huge interference with the ecosystem. You have a big environmental impact with a small desired side-effect."

Progress on other projects has been hindered by factors external to their intrinsic merits. Last year, a project known as Spice, which was to have deployed a tethered balloon to disperse water into the air - as a prelude to spraying climate-cooling sulphate particles - was grounded.

Core to the decision was a patent application lodged on some of the technology, though the team cited other concerns among the reasons for the postponement.

Debating the risk

Some scientists point out that manipulating the climate in one part of the world could have consequences elsewhere. Therefore, the argument goes, any action of this sort would need to be on a global level with international agreement.

Changing another country's weather is even classed as a war crime under the Geneva Convention of 1976.

Paul Nightingale of the Science and Technology Policy Research department at Sussex University, UK, says there is currently no infrastructure in place for such decisions to be made about our global climate.

"As a consequence they will be extremely contested," he adds.

Rose Cairns, also from Sussex University, has written a report for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) on the area. She says one issue is that geoengineering remains an extremely ambiguous term because the technology is so diverse.

Spraying aerosols into the stratosphere, for example, could be "highly controversial", while a global project to plant trees is likely to cause much less furore.

Danger zone?

As with any new technology, unpredictable side-effects of geoengineering cannot be ruled out.

For example, in addition to any benefits it might have, it is thought that lacing the stratosphere with sulphate aerosols could deplete atmospheric ozone and exacerbate the risk of drought - particularly in Asia and Africa where it might adversely affect the monsoon.

The injection of sulphate aerosols is designed to mimic volcanic eruptions

Again, it all comes down to the thorny subject of governance. Dr Cairns says: "Who would decide what would constitute an emergency that is serious enough to change the planet's temperature?

"Who would make that kind of decision, bearing in mind some of these technologies risk, for example, affecting monsoons and changing rainfall patterns."

Another issue is that once geoengineering becomes an option, it could curtail the momentum for reducing CO2 emissions.

"In that sense, conceptually, it's quite dangerous to even have it on the table," says Dr Cairns.

Money, money, money

Another factor would be the considerable cost of using new technologies on a global scale. While the financial cost might be outweighed by the environmental cost of inaction, Prof Nightingale says it would be better to spend money on making energy production greener.

"The thermodynamics of taking CO2 out of the air makes it much more expensive than taking CO2 out of exhausts and power stations," he explains.

"It seems such an expensive, complicated and risky set of technologies to be thinking about when we've got a lot of technologies that are environmentally benign."

Echoing these points, Lord Rees, English Astronomer Royal and former president of the UK Royal Society recently said that geoengineering would be a political nightmare with unintended side-effects.

A tangible timeline?

For now, only small-scale geoengineering tests can take place as long they do not affect biodiversity, a rule agreed by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in 2010.

Analysis

There is far more talk than action and opinions vary widely. There are some people who are enthusiastic - for example to save the Arctic sea ice - and others who think that it's far too soon to contemplate doing anything other than some limited research.

We don't know enough about any of the proposed techniques to even contemplate deploying them anytime soon, so I see it as being several decades away.

The worst thing that could happen is if people think this is going to be an easy way out and then try to do something on a large scale prematurely, which goes wrong.

Professor John Shepherd, National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, UK.

The limitation was in part achieved from heavy lobbying by campaigners from the ETC group. They said that their foremost concern was "the international control of planetary systems: our water, lands and air".

They also expressed concern that wealthy states could see it as a "quick, cheap fix for climate change" leaving no resources to tackle the current climate issues.

Andy Ridgwell, a professor of Earth system modelling at the University of Bristol, UK, counters by pointing out that we are already affecting biodiversity by "stuffing carbon into the atmosphere".

But he says it is more likely that "we will keep adapting" than embark on large-scale geoengineering projects anytime soon.

"Unless ice sheets collapse, I can't see a point at which we've passed a fundamental threshold where enough of the major emitters suddenly agree we'll have to do something," Prof Ridgwell says.

"Given that geoengineering would need international agreement, I suspect that [temperatures] will keep creeping up and people will have to adapt."

Prof Shepherd agrees that we're a long way from doing anything "other than talking and researching". But he adds that geoengineering could be the only way to actually reverse climate change.

"Emissions control will never reverse it. We are making what is essentially an irreversible change to the climate on human time-scales. The planet is still out of balance, the oceans are still warming," he says.

HUMAN ROLE IN GLOBAL WARMING

Human role in warming 'more certain' - UN climate chief

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24204323

By Roger Harrabin

Scientists are more certain than ever that greenhouse gases from human activities are heating the planet, the head of the UN's climate panel says.

Rajendra Pachauri made the comments in an interview with BBC News.

The panel is due to deliver its latest report on the state of the climate later this week in Stockholm, Sweden.

Its last report was criticised after an error on glaciers unveiled other flaws, but Prof Pachauri said procedures had been reformed and strengthened.

He also dismissed suggestions of a slowdown in global warming.

"There’s definitely an increase in our belief that climate change is taking place and that human beings are responsible,” he told me.

"I don't think there is a slowdown (in the rate of temperature increase). I would like to draw your attention to the World Meteorological Organization which clearly stated on the basis of observations that the first decade of this century has been the warmest in recorded history.

"And I think the rest will be brought out by the report itself when it’s released."

Prof Pachauri’s insistence that warming has not slowed hints at a focus of debate this week in Stockholm: Global temperatures have not been increasing as fast as scientists predicted, and several governmentsinsist that this puzzle is properly addressed in the final summary.

Have computer climate models overestimated the sensitivity of the planet to increasing CO2? Or has excess heat been stored up in oceans whence it will emerge to super-heat the planet in decades to come? Or both?

Or just perhaps it could be something else.

Unprecedented change

The draft says a doubling of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere above pre-industrial levels (expected by mid-century) is likely to result in a temperature rise globally of between 1.5 and 4.5C.

Any rise above 2C could risk major changes on Earth, according to projections, but the results of recent modelling involves a downward tweak at the bottom of the range, offering the tantalising prospect to politicians that if humans are very lucky, they could get away with rising CO2 emissions for a bit longer than previously expected.

The panel is struggling to offer a definitive answer as to why warming is not happening at the rate previously projected. But it will be anxious to ensure that the likelihood of a fortunate escape for humanity should not be overplayed.

It is expected to say that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities have already warmed the ocean, melted snow and ice, raised sea levels and increased climatic extremes.

It will also warn that unless emissions are cut soon, we are likely to suffer severe changes in the climate unprecedented for hundreds of thousands of years.

Prof Pachauri’s leadership of the panel has been strongly supported by developing countries, although he has faced criticism in the West. He told me he had no plans to retire after the forthcoming report.

He said the panel enjoyed massive support, with 3,000 people volunteering to act as authors, 831 of whom were selected.

Tightening procedures

In the detailed text of its last report, the UN panel made a controversial mistake on glaciers.

Prof Pachauri said: "We made one mistake about the glaciers melting by 2035 - for which we have apologised. That was totally out of character because we always give a range for these things and it somehow slipped through.

"But it wasn’t included in the technical summary or the summary for policymakers, it just somehow escaped attention.

“What we did say about the glaciers was in substance not all that wrong – the glaciers are melting across the globe so that is something we stand by.

“This time we have been doubly careful... [that] we don’t have any mistake of that type. And I hope that [the report] will reassure everyone that human influence is having a major impact on the Earth's climate.”

Prof Pachauri said he anticipated attempts to discredit the panel. But he claimed evidence of extreme events was persuading more and more people, especially in the US, that humans were taking a risk with the climate.

Indeed, the report is expected to say it is very likely that manmade climate change has produced higher precipitation in America.

"Hopefully,” he said, “there are enough sane and sensible people in the public who will ultimately prevail."

The broader question is whether science itself will prevail over politics. Whatever the pronouncements of the UN panel, emissions are expected to continue to increase into the foreseeable future as politicians weigh risks to energy bills and competitiveness against risks to the planet.

The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has re-confirmed that he will invite world leaders to a climate summit next year in an attempt to galvanise action.

Climate: Growing certainties on warming and human role

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-climate-certainties-human-role.html

Over the past 23 years, UN scientists have issued progressively stronger assertions about climate change.

They have moved from a sketchy warning that heat-trapping carbon gases emitted by fossil fuels will cause a "greenhouse" effect to the conviction that this effect is now having an impact on Earth's climate.

Following are extracts from the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change's assessment reports, the latest of which will be published from Friday.

First Assessment Report (1990)

"... emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases...

"These increases will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth's surface."

Second Assessment Report (1995)

"Most of these studies have detected a significant change and show that the observed warming trend is unlikely to be entirely natural in origin...

"... the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate.

"... the average rate of warming [in projections for the 21st century] would probably be greater than any seen in the last 10,000 years, but the actual annual to decadal changes would include considerable natural variability."

Third Assessment Report (2001)

"There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.

"... the projected rate of warming is much larger than the observed changes during the 20th century and is very likely to be without precedent during at least the last 10,000 years, based on paleoclimate data."

The report said the global average temperature had risen by 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) between 1901 and 2000.

Human activity was "likely" to be the cause of warming, a term meaning a probability of more than 66 percent.

Fourth Assessment Report (2007)

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.

"Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic [man-made] greenhouse gas concentrations."

The report said that warming over the previous 100 years was 0.74 C (1.33 F), and 11 of the previous 12 years had been the warmest on record.

Human activity was "very likely" the cause of warming, meaning a probability of more than 90 percent.

Fifth Assessment Report (draft version seen by AFP)

"In the northern hemisphere, the period 1983-2012 was very likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 800 years and likely the warmest period of the last 1,400 years.

"....Greenhouse gases contributed a global mean surface warming likely to be in the range of 0.5-1.3 C [0.9-2.3 F] over the period 1951-2010."

"...There is high confidence that this has warmed the ocean, melted snow and ice, raised global mean sea level and changed some climate extremes in the second half of the 20th century."

Human activity was "extremely likely" to be the cause of this warming, meaning between 95 and 100 percent probability.

The draft attributes an observed slowing in warming from 1998 to 2012—a phenomenon cited by skeptics as evidence that warming is not man-made—to a temporary cooling cycle in the weather system and lower-than-expected solar activity.

Temperatures since 1901 have risen by 0.89 C (1.6 F), it says.

Additional warming this century is estimated to range from 1.0 to 3.7 C (1.8-6.6 F), and sea level rise from 40 to 62 centimetres (16-24.8 inches), according to four projections based on how much carbon is emitted.

As in past reports, these estimates are an average. Each projection gives a wide margin of variation either side of the figure.

Evidence mounts for human role in climate change

http://horizon-magazine.eu/article/evidence-mounts-human-role-climate-change_en.html

by Ben Deighton

Complex computer models have helped the IPCC make climate forecasts. © UPSCALE | Credits: Natural Energy Research Council (NERC) and UK Met Office Joint Weather and Climate Research Programme (JWCRP).

Scientists are more certain than ever that humans are the cause of global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its most authoritative report to date, drawing on millions of scientific observations - many of which were gathered by scientists in Europe.

The data used to compile the report includes that gathered by the EU-funded airship PEGASOS, which has been measuring the air quality over Europe to link air pollution to climate change, and RECONCILE, which helped find the first ever observed hole in the ozone layer in the Arctic region.

In its fifth assessment report, released on 27 September, the IPCC concluded that there is an at least 95 % likelihood that humans are the dominant cause of global warming. That makes them the surest they have ever been that humans are causing climate change.

Scientists are able to be so categorical because of the number of research papers that have been taken into account in producing the report. It cites over 9 200 scientific publications, more than three quarters of which have been published since the previous assessment in 2007, and bases its conclusions on millions of observations.

‘Up to now it is the only endeavour of this kind of science in the world,’ said Dr Anastasios Kentarchos, the deputy head of the Climate Change and Natural Hazards Unit at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, who was present during the discussions in Stockholm running up to the publication of the report. ‘This is a huge pool of scientists that on a voluntary basis are giving their brains and their minds for five years to do this work,’ he added referring to the IPCC report.

Unprecedented in 800 000 years

Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800 000 years, the report said.

The EU’s in-house science service, the Joint Research Centre, has provided critical data on worldwide emissions through its EDGAR database, which models emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants.

The rise in greenhouse gases is likely to mean that global temperatures will increase by over 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, when compared to the 1850 to 1900 period, according to all but the lowest scenario considered by the report.

‘Continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system,’ said Thomas Stocker, the co-chairman of the IPCC group that assesses the physical science basis for climate change.

Climate models

Complex computer models, such as those developed by the EU-funded ENSEMBLES project, are required to allow the panel to make such forecasts. The project has modelled the simultaneous activity of the oceans, land and the atmosphere to show that the world will experience further measurable climate change.

The European airship PEGASOS. © PEGASOS

Other research groups concentrated on specific aspects, like Ice2Sea, which forecasts that by 2100 storm surges along Europe’s coastline could be up to 1 metre higher than they are today, presenting challenges to flood defences and natural habitats.

However, more data is needed to improve the accuracy of the models, for example by understanding the role of the permafrost, the permanently frozen layer of soil, in the Arctic regions on greenhouse gas levels. That's now being done by the EU-funded PAGE21 project, which brings together permafrost researchers from Europe, Canada, Russia, the US, and Japan.

‘The more observations you build, the better you understand the drivers of climate change and you can validate more accurately the next generation of climate models,’ said Dr Kentarchos. 

Future research should concentrate on improving the capacity of climate models to make forecasts on a regional scale, providing data that is useful for farmers as they plan how best to use their land, or governments as they decide where to invest money to protect their citizens from climate change.

‘The models are useful to stakeholders when they give you trustworthy information at the right regional or sub-regional scale,’ said Dr Kentarchos.