University of East Anglia

THE UNIVERSITY OF East Anglia (UEA) is a leading campus university located in Norwich, England. It was founded as part of the British government's New Universities Program in the 1960s. The university is a member of the 1994 group of leading research-intensive universities. Academically, it is one of the most successful universities founded in the 1960s, consistently ranking among Britain's top higher-education institutions. It was 19th in the Sunday Times University League Table 2006, and joint first for student satisfaction among mainstream English universities in the 2006 National Student Survey. Furthermore, the university was ranked 57th in Europe and one of the top 200 universities in the world in the 2006 World University Rankings undertaken by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The School of Environmental Sciences is one of the longest-established, largest, and most fully developed Schools of Environmental Sciences in Europe. The School of Environmental Sciences offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs with an emphasis in a number of studies. The school is also engaged in research in a number of areas from atmospheric sciences to marine sciences. The school has been ranked high in research and teaching.

The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) is widely recognized as one of the world's leading institutions concerned with the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change. The unit consists of a staff of around 30 research scientists and students and has developed a number of the data sets widely used in climate research, including the global temperature record used to monitor the state of the climate system, as well as statistical software packages and climate models. The aim of the Climatic Research Unit is to improve scientific understanding in three areas: past climate history and its effect on humanity, course and causes of climate change during the present century, and prospects for the future.

The Climatic Research Unit is part of the School of Environmental Sciences, with close links to other research groups within the department, such as the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment. The unit undertakes collaborative research with institutes throughout the world on a diverse range of topics and is coordinating or contributing to a number of networking activities. The CRU participates in both pure and applied research, sponsored almost entirely by external contracts and grants from academic funding councils, government departments, intergovernmental agencies, charitable foundations, nongovernmental organizations, commerce, and industry. Alongside its research activities, the unit has an educational role through its contribution to formal teaching with the School of Environmental Sciences (most notably, the M.Sc. in climate change) and various forms of in-service training, including postgraduate education. It is regarded as an authoritative source of information on both the science and policy aspects of climate change by the media and maintains a high public profile. The unit staff have published many peer-reviewed articles as well as editing various scientific journals, newsletters, and bulletins.