Future impacts, risks, and mitigation actions
Future impacts, risks, and mitigation actions (TerraFIRMA) is assessing a range of climate mitigation strategies and will provide reliable guidance on the impacts of future climate change.
The world has warmed by around 1°C since the industrial revolution and is getting warmer at an increasing pace, with serious consequences for our planet’s climate, future food security, water resources, health and biodiversity. Mitigation actions can reduce the rate of climate change.
Decision-makers in government and the private sector are increasingly required to focus their attention on climate change mitigation options, and TerraFIRMA aims to provide advice on the most effective actions.
Mitigation actions include limiting or preventing greenhouse gas emissions, or enhancing activities that remove these gases from the atmosphere.
The TerraFIRMA programme will examine a range of climate mitigation strategies, from afforestation and rewilding, to cutting methane emissions and other pathways to net zero (not adding to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere).
TerraFIRMA’s work will recognise that greenhouse gases can come from a range of sources and climate mitigation can be applied across sectors such as energy, transport, buildings, industry, waste management, agriculture, forestry, and other forms of land management.
The TerraFIRMA team are also dedicating attention to the implications of allowable carbon budgets and sustainable development goals, wider impacts on the environment, economy and society, and co-benefits such as improving air quality.
The programme will also investigate the risks and consequences associated with overshooting key global warming targets, including the risk of rapid change in a range of regional climate phenomena and the potential reversibility of any triggered changes.
TerraFIRMA is led by the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, in collaboration with several Natural Environment Research Council-supported research centres, including: British Antarctic Survey, British Geological Survey, Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, National Centre for Earth Observation, National Oceanography Centre, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, and UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. The Met Office Hadley Centre is also a key partner in the TerraFIRMA collaboration.
TerraFIRMA is part of the Natural Environment Research Council’s National Capability Multi-Centre Science programme – designed to bring science centres together for more ambitious, integrated, and large-scale research into critical environmental challenges.
