SAGES Theme 3 brings together over 300 leading scientists from across Scotland to improve our understanding of past, present and future climate change and how it impacts society.
The theme focuses on changes occurring across all aspects of our earth system including in the atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere and crucially the interactions between them. It seeks to address research questions that are highly relevant from a societal perspective for meeting the complex challenges posed by climate change.
Membership of this theme is open to all researchers from both the natural and social sciences where collaboration is encouraged to promote greater integration of science with the needs of society.
Within this theme, there is a strong focus on research that models the dynamics of past, present, and predicted ocean and atmospheric change to help understand the drivers and effects of climate change, in particular regional variability, changes in extreme climate, as well as abrupt and irreversible changes.
However, improved alignment of scientific and technological developments with the specific challenges faced by society in different geographic contexts is fundamental for ensuring that research outcomes are optimally responsive for meeting human needs and improving social equality. With this in mind we strongly encourage research and welcome new members whose work promotes activity at the science-policy interface and research focusing on understanding current human impacts of compounding and cascading forms of climate events and environmental pollutants, and the development of new evaluation, monitoring and measurement techniques to improve understanding of the effectiveness of developments in predictive modelling on climate adaptation, climate action, pro-climate behaviour change, and the governance and management of environmental pollutants.
