LIRIC

Full project title: NERC- FAPESP-NSTC Land Use Change Investigation and Regional Climate (LIRIC) 

Duration: 1 November 2024 to 30 October 2026

Project lead for CESR: Dr Kwok Chun

Other UWE Bristol researcher: Dr Thanti Octavianti

Research partners/collaborators:

• Birmingham City University
• Istanbul Technical University
• Met Office
• University Institute of Buenos Aires
• University of Bonn
• University of Rouen Normandy
• Classic Landscape Design and Environmental Planning
• Attentional Centre for Atmospheric Research
• National Taiwan University
• University of Sao Paulo

Funder: Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) - Environmental sciences: Global Partnerships Seedcorn Fund 2024

Advances in supercomputing have enabled climate models to operate at kilometre-scale resolution, allowing convection-permitting models (CPMs) to explicitly represent atmospheric processes such as heat and moisture transport. These high-resolution models provide more realistic simulations of temperature and precipitation, particularly for extreme localised events.

This project aims to investigate how land use changes, especially urban density and building height, affect regional climates. CPM simulations will be developed and compared for three contrasting regions: Guandu (Taiwan), São Paulo (Brazil), and Bristol (UK). By analysing differences in temperature and precipitation patterns across these regions, the study will enhance understanding of how land use influences climate variability and extremes.

The project integrates expertise from the UK, Brazil, and Taiwan, combining atmospheric science, urban planning, and environmental management. Overall, it seeks to inform sustainability discussions and planning decisions through high-resolution atmospheric simulation and international collaboration.

The project will deliver a set of high-resolution CPM simulations for Taiwan and Brazil, alongside comparative analyses with existing UK datasets from Europe-CORDEX and UKCP18. These outputs will quantify how different land use types, including urban areas and cropland, affect temperature and precipitation patterns. Hydroclimatic assessments will examine how urban development influences joint extremes of heat and rainfall. Findings will be disseminated through international workshops in Brazil, Taiwan, and the UK, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists, urban planners, and decision makers.

A key output will be immersive visualisation tools that communicate complex atmospheric simulation in accessible ways for stakeholders, supporting decision-making in climate adaptation through virtual reality. The project will also establish a strong interdisciplinary research network and lay the groundwork for future collaborative proposals on AI-driven downscaling approaches for climate services. On the whole, outputs will contribute to evidence-based strategies for environmental change management and support global efforts aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 13: Climate Action.

For further information about the project, please contact Dr Kwok Chun (kwok.chun@uwe.ac.uk).