FST JOURNAL
Update
Update
Digital twin projects win funds to model environmental processes
Five projects harnessing the potential of digital twinning technology to transform environmental science will share a total of £2.8 million in funding delivered by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), in partnership with the Met Office, as part of the Twinning Capability for the Natural Environment (TWINE) programme.
The digital twin pilot projects will demonstrate how research using Earth observation data and emerging digital twinning technologies can transform environmental science across priority areas including climate change, biodiversity and ecosystems, and natural hazards.
A digital twin is a dynamic virtual copy of a physical asset, process, system or environment that looks like and behaves in real time identically to its real-world partner. Actions and events can be modelled with unprecedented accuracy, offering the ability to experiment in a non-live environment of the real world.
The five projects are led by scientists at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, National Oceanography Centre, University of Cambridge, University of Hull and University of Plymouth. They will develop digital twins in:
- coastal ocean ecosystems for assimilation to marine system models
- ocean glider observations for ocean models which underpin weather forecasts
- the operational flights of a research aircraft
- water-related hazard forecasting in Hull and East Riding of Yorkshire
- wave overtopping to produce a warning tool for wave hazards.
The projects will last a maximum duration of 15 months.
World breaches 1.5˚ C warming target in 2023
January 2024 was the warmest January in the ERA5 atmospheric reanalysis of the data record going back to 1940. The global surface air temperature was 13.14°C, which is 0.70°C above the 1991-2020 average for January and 0.12°C above the previous warmest January, in 2020. Taking into account the average of the last twelve months, the global mean temperature was the highest on record at 0.64°C above the 1991-2020 average and 1.52°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average.
Samantha Burgess, Deputy Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said: "2024 starts with another record-breaking month – not only is it the warmest January on record but we have also just experienced a 12-month period [with a mean global average temperature] more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial reference period. Rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are the only way to stop global temperatures increasing.”
The average global sea surface temperature (SST) for January outside the polar regions reached 20.97°C, the highest recorded for January and the second highest monthly temperature in the ERA5 dataset for any month, only 0.01°C below the highest, reached in August 2023.
https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-january-2024
European weather centre for Reading
Plans for a new European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) headquarters on Reading University’s Whiteknights campus have been approved. It will house 300 scientists in a state-of-the-art, sustainably-designed facility. The move from ECMWF’s current home to a plot next to the University’s Department of Meteorology will create one of the world’s largest clusters of weather and climate scientists in the world.
Construction is expected to begin later this year, with the project due to complete in autumn 2026.
Setting out a roadmap for nuclear power
The Government has published its roadmap for what it describes as ‘the biggest expansion of nuclear power for 70 years’. The Civil Nuclear Roadmap will, says the Government, give industry certainty of the future direction of the UK’s ambitious nuclear programme.
The roadmap sets out how the UK will increase generation of nuclear supply by up to 4 times to 24 gigawatts (GW) by 2050 – enough to provide a quarter of the UK’s expected electricity needs.
The plans include next steps for exploring a gigawatt-scale power plant as big as Sizewell in Suffolk or Hinkley in Somerset, which will themselves be capable of powering 6 million homes each.
In addition, the Government commits to invest up to £300 million in UK production of the fuel required to power high-tech new nuclear reactors, known as HALEU, currently only commercially produced in Russia. This builds on the ambition to return uranium conversion to the Springfields nuclear fuel sit near Preston.
An additional £10 million will be provided to develop the skills and sites needed to produce other advanced nuclear fuels in the UK, helping to secure long term domestic nuclear fuel supply and support the UK’s allies.
The roadmap includes a government ambition to secure 3-7GW worth of investment decisions every 5 years from 2030 to 2044 on new nuclear projects.
www.gov.uk/government/publications/civil-nuclear-roadmap-to-2050
Government pumps money into decarbonising industry
Over £190 million is being made available to help industry in the transition to net zero, reducing emissions as they switch to cleaner, cheaper energy. The Government opened a new phase of the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund in January for £185 million to help companies transform their operations to run on cleaner, more secure energy – supporting measures such as replacing inefficient equipment, installing electric furnaces and switching to hydrogen. The funding is designed to ensure businesses are supported in the transition to net zero, in a sustainable way and cost-effective way, securing green industrial jobs for the future.
Sectors including manufacturing and recycling – and for the first time controlled environment horticulture, industrial laundries and textile renting facilities – will be among those eligible for apply for this new support, as part of wider government efforts to meet the UK’s net zero targets.
Twelve winning projects from the Local Industrial Decarbonisation Plan competition have also been announced. These will each benefit from a share of up to £6 million to develop plans for a low carbon future. The projects bring together local partners to develop plans to cut manufacturing emissions.
This will be targeted at projects outside of the UK’s major industrial areas – from a Yorkshire pet food manufacturer to a Poole ferry operator. Companies in dispersed locations away from industrial heartlands account for 55% of the country’s industrial emissions.
Lords’ warning on light and noise pollution
The House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology has published a report on artificial light and noise and their impacts on human health. It concludes that environmental noise and light remain neglected pollutants, are poorly understood and poorly regulated despite their potential to negatively impact human health.
Both noise and light pollution impact negatively on human health through disrupting sleep and circadian rhythms. Epidemiological evidence suggests that noise pollution causes annoyance and increases the risk of stroke and heart disease. Research from the UK Health Security Agency suggests the equivalent of 130,000 healthy life years are lost from noise pollution each year in Britain. This has significant impacts on the economy: sleep disturbance is estimated to cost the UK economy £34 billion a year, according to RAND Europe, and noise and light pollution are contributing factors.
The Committee is concerned that the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan only briefly mentions noise and light pollution, with no specific targets to reduce them, and that there is seemingly little impetus from central government to address them. Light and noise pollution can all too often fall through the cracks between departments and between policies from central government and local government implementation on the ground, with responsibility for tackling the issue unclear.
DSIT publishes map of innovation activity
The Department for Science Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has published an Innovation Clusters Map. It aims to provide a comprehensive picture of firm-level innovation activity in the UK and is designed to help policymakers, investors and many more besides to better understand, engage with and invest in the UK’s ecosystem.
From space in Scotland to net zero in the North East, and from advanced manufacturing in the Midlands to life sciences in the South, the UK is home to some of the world’s cutting-edge clusters. Enabling these clusters to reach their potential is essential to delivering on the Government’s target of making the UK the most innovative economy in the world.
Launching the Map, Science Secretary Michelle Donelan said it would play a vital role in supporting three of the Department’s goals for clusters:
- Increase private investment in innovation clusters significantly, building on substantial public investment, and anchored in clusters’ unique strengths.
- Ensure clusters can expertly communicate their investible propositions to investors and have access to the right support to take these to fruition.
- Ensure people across the UK benefit from the innovation-led economy, by creating high-skilled jobs and prosperity across its innovation clusters.
New facility sheds light on polar organisms
The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) will build a new unique science facility at its UK Cambridge headquarters, enabling scientists to understand how organisms that live in cold polar environments evolved and the impact of environmental change on these special ecosystems.
The new Controlled Environment Facility will include a polar marine aquarium (run at -2°C to 0°C), and three environmental experimental rooms (operating at -5°C to 30°C) with precision instruments combined with deep-frozen storage. It will be the only combined low temperature biological storage and experimental facility in the UK and one of three globally.
Polar ecosystems have evolved over many millions of years to live in very cold temperatures and with extremes of light; 24 hours of sunlight in summer and 24 hours of darkness in winter. These ecosystems contain huge amounts of undiscovered biodiversity (it is estimated that there are 20,000 species in the ocean around Antarctica alone), which are under severe threat from climate change.
Loss of biodiversity in the polar regions has many consequences beyond ecosystem sustainability and conservation. For example, research at the new facility will enable scientists to identify novel proteins and new compounds for potential applications in medicine, biotechnology, and other industries.