PhD Studentship: Impact of small-magnitude volcanic eruptions on historical climate change. NERC GW4+ DTP PhD studentship for September 2025 Entry Ref 5404

About the Partnership

This project is one of a number that are in competition for funding from the NERC Great Western Four+ Doctoral Training Partnership (GW4+ DTP).  The GW4+ DTP consists of the Great Western Four alliance of the University of Bath, University of Bristol, Cardiff University and the University of Exeter plus five Research Organisation partners:  British Antarctic Survey, British Geological Survey, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology,  the Natural History Museum and Plymouth Marine Laboratory.  The partnership aims to provide a broad training in earth and environmental sciences, designed to train tomorrow’s leaders in earth and environmental science. For further details about the programme please see http://nercgw4plus.ac.uk/

Project details

For information relating to the research project please contact the lead Supervisor via t.aubry@exeter.ac.uk

Project Aims and Methods

Historical (1850-present) climate simulations are crucial to evaluate climate models on which future climate projections rely, as well as to disentangle the contributions of anthropogenic and natural forcings to past climate change. One of the most important natural forcings is stratospheric aerosols injected by explosive volcanic eruptions which cool climate globally. Whereas large magnitude eruptions are well reconstructed, smaller but more frequent eruptions are very poorly constrained before 1979, the beginning of the satellite era. Yet, these small-magnitude eruptions contribute half of the total aerosol emissions, suggesting a crucial bias in the last generation of climate model simulations.  
In this project, the student will leverage a novel inventory of small-magnitude eruptions to produce the first ensemble of historical climate simulations with a holistic representation of volcanic eruptions. They will run these simulations with the latest version of the UK Earth System Model (UKESM), the UK’s flagship climate model, and work hand in hand with the UK Met Office and international partners. The analysis of these simulations will quantify the impact of small eruptions on historical temperatures, precipitations and on key modes of climate variability. It will also illuminate the importance of pre-satellite era biases in our climate forcing datasets. 

Project partners

The Met Office will provide training and access to expertise at UK Met office; IT support and hardware. 

Training

The DTP offers funding to undertake specialist training relating to the student’s specialist area of research. 

Useful links

Webpage: https://sites.google.com/view/thomasjaubry/ 

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