Climatic Research Unit

THE CLIMATIC RESEARCH Unit is regarded as one of the worlds leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change. It was founded in 1972 at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, by Professor Hubert Lamb (1913–97). The Unit, often known simply as CRU, was the first research center of its kind with a focus on research into climatology, in particular climatic change, and on interdisciplinary and historical research on the climate of the past. Lamb, one of the best known climatologists of his time, remained CRU's Director until 1978 when he became emeritus professor. In August 2006, the distinctive circular CRU building was named the Hubert Lamb Building. Subsequent directors of the Unit have been Tom Wigley, Trevor Davies and Jean Palutikof. The current Director is Phil Jones.

Lamb was employed by the United Kingdoms Meteorological Office from 1936 onwards. In 1950, he published a classic paper on weather types and natural seasons in Britain. The Lamb Weather Type (LWT) classification described in this paper began a new era in climatological research. In the 1960s, Lamb focused on reconstructions of monthly atmospheric circulation changes over the North Atlantic and Europe back to the 1750s. This research confirmed his growing conviction of the reality of natural climate change and its significance to humans. In 1970, he published a classic paper on the connections between volcanism and climatic change. His estimates of the dust ejected into the atmosphere by historical eruptions became known as the Lamb Dust Veil Index. Lamb was also one of the pioneers in the use of documentary evidence to reconstruct past changes in climate. This continues as a major focus of work in the CRU.

Although Lamb's work was crucial in the early years of the CRU, the Unit has had a number of other outstanding scientists on its staff. Their work has broadened the general aims of the CRU and helped to improve scientific understanding of past climate and its impact on humanity, the course and causes of climate change over the past century, and prospects for the future. The Unit currently employs 46 scientists and graduate students as well as hosting an M.Sc. course in Climate Change. CRU researchers have developed a number of data sets widely-used in climate research, including gridded data sets for surface temperature, precipitation, pressure, tree-ring records that have been important in reconstructing temperature variations over the past 1,000 years, and documentary records of climate and climate impacts. The user-friendly software package MAGICC/SCEN-GEN, used for making projections of future global-mean temperature, sea level, and patterns of climate change, was developed in the CRU (downloadable from http://www.cgd.ucar.edu).

Climate affects both social and natural systems through the occurrence of weather extremes, through inter-annual climate variability and through longer-term climate change. CRU researchers study aspects of all three of these scales of climate impact, with projects ranging from the United Kingdom to [Page 252]Europe, Africa and Vietnam. A better understanding of the ways in which climate extremes and variability have affected society and the environment in the past is a pre-requisite for attempting to understand how serious the range of impacts associated with future climate change are likely to be. The results of analyses such as these feed directly into the design of climate-change response policies, whether these be mitigation or adaptation. Specific research areas include: paleoclimatology, dendroclimatology, present-day climate and climatological datasets, climate-change detection and attribution, construction of climate change scenarios, impacts of climate variability and change, links between atmospheric circulation and transport/deposition of air pollution, atmospheric sciences, and hydrology.

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