Dr Alan Kennedy-Asser
MSci, PHD
Expertise
Current positions
Research Associate
School of Geographical Sciences
Contact
Press and media
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Research interests
My current research is on changes in climate and precipitation over southern Africa as part of the SALIENT project. I primarily focus on climate data analysis, using observational and global climate model data. However, I am also involved in other interdisciplinary elements to the SALIENT project, including contributing to an expert elicitation, exploring risk communication and understanding how climate information is used in practice.
Previous, I focussed my research on summer heat extremes in the UK. I am interested in how these extremes are changing, as well as how we can model and manage risks accosiated with extremes and heat stress. This work, which was part of the UK Climate Resilience Program funded OpenCLIM project, used the latest UK Met Office UKCP18 simulations. During this time I also carried out an embedded research placement with Climate Northern Ireland, using interdisciplinary methods to focus on climate change impacts on agriculture and rural areas in Northern Ireland.
I have worked across many scales. My PhD was in palaeoclimate, using global climate model simulations to understand changes in climate at the Eocene-Oligocene Transition, when the Antarctic Ice Sheet first formed. Further to this, previous topics of interest and research include climate hydrology (specifically the impact of soil moisture on temperate extremes), glacial hydrology (modelling the flow of water beneath Leverett Glacier in Greenland), Antarctic/Southern Ocean climate and oceanography (having volunteered as a research scientist on the RRS James Clark Ross on the ANDREXII cruise in the Weddell Sea in 2018) and long-term future climate (up to 1 million years into the future).
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
UKRI FLF Climate futures science for adaptation: re-orienting climate analysis and utilizing communications research to transform climate change outlooks
Principal Investigator
Role
Researcher
Managing organisational unit
School of Geographical SciencesDates
01/08/2022 to 31/07/2026
Once upon a time in a heatwave - exploring the power of stories to engage and empower people in climate change risk and resilience in Northern Ireland
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Geographical SciencesDates
01/11/2021 to 31/10/2022
Temperature Life Stories: Feeling the heat
Principal Investigator
Description
An inter-disciplinary project to explore perceptions of temperature extremes experienced throughout participants’ lives. Personal reflections on temperature will be facilitated through poetry workshops and these reflections will be compared against…Managing organisational unit
School of Geographical SciencesDates
10/03/2021 to 30/11/2021
Publications
Recent publications
24/02/2022Projected risks associated with heat stress in the UK Climate Projections (UKCP18)
Environmental Research Letters
The 2021 western North America heat wave among the most extreme events ever recorded globally
Science Advances
The biological carbon pump in CMIP6 models
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Updated projections of UK heat-related mortality using policy-relevant global warming levels and socio-economic scenarios
Environmental Research Letters
Eocene to Oligocene terrestrial Southern Hemisphere cooling caused by declining 푝CO2
Nature Geoscience
Thesis
Climatic and oceanic changes across the Eocene-Oligocene Transition
Supervisors
Award date
25/06/2019