The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest on the planet by a factor 10. It holds enough ice to raise global sea level by ~65 m. Small changes in the balance between losses and gains (the mass balance) can have, therefore, profound implications for sea level, ocean circulation and our understanding of the stability of the ice mass. Local variations in mass balance may be driven by short or long term changes in ice dynamics that may or may not be related to recent climatic change. They may also be due to trends in snowfall. There is now a general consensus that the ice sheet is losing mass but the range of estimates and uncertainties are still, in most cases, larger than the signal. To solve the open question of what the time evolving mass change is, we propose combining satellite observations, climate modelling and physical constraints to solve for the independent and uncorrelated errors that have hampered previous approaches. Sea level rise (SLR) since 1992 has averaged around 3.2 mm/yr, ~ twice the mean for the 20th Century. The cause is uncertain, but it is clear that a significant component is due to increased losses from both Greenland and Antarctica. Recent advances in regional climate modelling and analysis of gravity anomalies from the GRACE satellites have greatly improved our knowledge of both the magnitude and origin of mass losses from Greenland. Unfortunately, this is not the case for Antarctica for a range of reasons. The aim of this project is to address this shortcoming using a similar, but more comprehensive, approach to the one we used to improve our understanding of changes in Greenland. To do this, we must employ additional data and methods because i) the uncertainty in post glacial rebound for the West Antarctic Ice Sheet , in particular, is of a similar magnitude to the signal (unlike Greenland), ii) errors in observed and modelled variables are generally larger because of the paucity of in-situ data sets in, and around, Antarctica, and iii) observations in time and space are poorer for most of the ice sheet and, in particular, the areas showing the greatest change.

This project aims to develop, and to provide a range of mechanisms to support interdisciplinary collaborations that use and develop new mathematics for understanding climate variability and impact on resilience. Focusing on three scientific themes the project will nurture connections between mathematicians, statisticians, environmental scientists, policy makers and end users working in impact areas to help to identify high-risk and high-return research that will develop collaborations in the areas of the themes. We will do this by a range of tools, including a series of managed events (workshops, sandpits, study groups and e-seminars) that will focus on specific problems to end users as well as promoting novel collaborations in the areas of scientific focus. We will provide a mechanism to solicit, evaluate and fund proposals for feasibility studies that work across this area. This will be informed by an expert panel of researchers as well as an advisory panel taken from national and international groups and end-users.

The Milky Way-Gaia Doctoral Network (MWGaiaDN): Revealing the Milky Way (MW) with Gaia - Excellent science, Extending techniques, Enhancing people skills, Effecting the next revolution in European led astronomy through leadership in astrometric-based science. What: Gaia, ESA's major space mission launched in Dec 2013, is now in its extended mission to map some two billion stars in the MW. It's upcoming data releases , that will provide chemical and physical annotation of the earlier positional releases, present major challenges in terms of complexity and size, hence research training to deliver a full science exploitation is essential, ensuring that Gaia is the `game changer' for astronomy How: Our DN will link major partners responsible for the development of Gaia, to form an effective and unique training network combining the best research training with a range of academic and industrial placements, specialist research and knowledge transfer workshops. It will develop and train a cohort of young researchers through a set of key science projects pushing the Gaia data to its limits. Our DN will train 10 ESRs located across 10 European beneficiaries, benefiting from the participation of 13 associate partners. These include major industry (e.g. AirbusDS, TAS), at the forefront of Space and Information technologies; SME Industry (e.g. DAPCOM, Suil), innovating new technologies for Space and partners leading the development of next generation astrometry missions outside of Europe (NAOJ). Relevance: It will shape the delivery of training in astrometry and the study of the MW across Europe: delivering key insights into the structure and formation of our Galaxy; delivering the roadmap for the next generation of astrometric space telescopes; equipping the ESRs with skills to drive the next innovative steps in this crucial area of space discovery, as well as enabling them to contribute to the future, growth and challenges of the big data industry and commerce. MWGaiaDN

The research proposed here aims to help us understand year-to-year variations in climate around the world. This includes the occurrence of floods and droughts, of heat waves and cold spells. To do this, we are going to examine the largest source of year-to-year climate variability on Earth, namely, El Niño. The El Niño is a warm ocean current that appears off the coast of NW South America every 3-5 years, and it is a result of a much larger scale phenomenon involving changes to the winds, rainfall, temperature and ocean currents across the whole of the tropical Pacific. The larger scale phenomenon is known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, a name which reflects the fact that it involves a natural cycle in the circulation of both the atmosphere and the surface ocean and how they interact. Although we know that ENSO originates in the tropical Pacific, it has near world-wide impacts because of the way it affects the circulation of the atmosphere, and hence the winds and transport of moisture from the tropics to the extra-tropics. Floods and droughts and changed incidence of storminess from El Niño directly affect the lives and livelihoods of well over a billion people, and major El Niño events are associated with tens of thousands of human deaths, billions of pounds of damage, and devastation to some natural ecosystems such as coral reefs. Even Europe experiences changed weather patterns associated with ENSO! Although we now understand quite well the basic mechanisms behind the ENSO cycle, some major questions remain. In particular, we do not understand why some El Niño events are much stronger than others, why some decades show much stronger El Niño activity, or how ENSO will respond to climate change. To help answer some of these questions, we will reconstruct changes in ENSO over the past 5,000 years by analysing growth rings in the skeletons of old dead ('fossil') corals that lived in the Galápagos. The Galápagos Islands experience extreme changes in weather associated with El Niño (warmer and wetter during events), and these changes are recorded in the chemistry of the skeletons of corals living in the surrounding ocean. Some of these corals live for up to a hundred years, or longer, laying down layers of skeleton a bit like tree rings. We will collect cores through old dead corals, including some that lived thousands of years ago. Then, by analysing the chemistry of their growth bands we will be able to reconstruct the changes in climate, and ENSO, that the corals experienced during their life time. By combining the records from many such corals we will build up a picture of the natural variability in ENSO, helping us see how often major events occurred, and how much decade-to-decade variability in ENSO occurred. These coral records can let us reconstruct the history of past changes in ENSO, but on their own they do not help us to understand the causes of the changes. Were they due to changes in the sun's radiation? Or due to the cooling effects of major volcanic eruptions? Or were they simply random variations that we should expect without any sort of trigger? To answer these questions, we need to use climate models. The same models that we now use to predict future climate can be used to research changes in ENSO. In our work, we will use the most up-to-date climate models to see if they can correctly replicate the observed changes in ENSO over the past few thousand years as defined by our coral records. We can also see what the effects are of changing volcanic eruptions, solar radiation and greenhouse gases in these models. By comparing the model results with the coral records we will get a better understanding of the nature and causes of changes in ENSO, and the skill of the models at predicting this. In this way we will make a significant contribution to helping predict the likely range of ENSO-related climate events for the coming decades.

Vanadium dioxide, VO2, undergoes a transition from an insulating phase to a metallic state when it is heated above a critical temperature Tc of 68C. The precise mechanisms underlying this transformation remain controversial, primarly because coupling between local strain and Tc makes it very challenging to infer the true (microscopic) properties of the material from macroscopic measurements that average over a large volume. A new way to study this problem has been pioneered by Prof. David Cobden at the University of Washington in Seattle, by using VO2 'nanobeams', smaller than the characteristic domain size. However all the results to date have been obtained using optical microscopy and electrical measurements of nanobeams suspended between contacts. The expertise at Warwick, in electron microscopy, provides an opportunity to study the domain boundary between the insulating and metallic phases in unprecedented detail, with the aim of answering long-standing problems and new questions arising from Prof. Cobden's work. A short programme of research is in place for the summer of 2011, and this travel grant will provide an opportunity to develop proposals for future research, enabling us to sustain this new collaboration.