
Prof Neil Edwards
Professor Of Earth System Science
School of Environment, Earth & Ecosystem Sciences
Biography
Professional biography
Climate and environmental change breaks the statistical predictability that underlies insurance against natural disasters, questions the regulation of borrowing and investment between generations, disturbs the ecological systems that support the global population and threatens the stability of nations.
The impacts and feedbacks are dynamic, complex and multi-scale in space and time, they cannot be properly managed without an evolving dialogue that thoroughly explores the interface between environmental and socio-economic change.
My research exploits dynamically simplified Earth system models and complementary approaches to bring the understanding of processes and feedbacks between natural and human systems and sub-systems to the fore.
Through a series of major interdisciplinary consortium projects, including GENIE and ERMITAGE, I have played a leading role in the integration of modelling and observational paleoclimate research and in the integration of detailed Earth system models with complex macroeconomic and energy technology forecasting models for the purposes of environmental policy assessments.
To date (February 2025) I have been instrumental in raising over £20m of funding for Earth-system and integrated assessment modelling research and published over 100 refereed articles in a range of related fields, including 15 in Science, Nature and Cell Press journals (H=47 Google Scholar).
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. (TS Eliot)
Research interests
Climate Dynamics, Integrated Assessment Modelling, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics.
Teaching interests
I have worked on a number of environment-related modules and recently chaired two interdisciplinary third-level modules in presentation, U316 The environmental web and S396 Ecosystems. I also chaired the production of the third-level Terrestrial Ecosystems module S397.
Current roles
Co-Director (Sustainability), Open Societal Challenges programme
Open University Co-lead (Environment), Interdisciplinary Life and Environmental Sciences Landscape Award (ILESLA), PhD training programme
Projects
Publications
Book Chapter
ABC for Climate: Dealing with Expensive Simulators (2018)
Linking climate and economic dynamics (2005)
An Oracle method to couple climate and economic dynamics (2005)
Journal Article
Transforming US agriculture for carbon removal with enhanced weathering (2025)
Polar wander leads to large differences in past climate reconstructions (2025)
Potential pension fund losses should not deter high-income countries from bold climate action (2023)
Reply to: When did mammoths go extinct? (2022)
Substantial carbon drawdown potential from enhanced rock weathering in the United Kingdom (2022)
Stranded fossil-fuel assets translate to major losses for investors in advanced economies (2022)
Reframing incentives for climate policy action (2021)
Tectonic and climatic drivers of Asian monsoon evolution (2021)
The role of habitat fragmentation in Pleistocene megafauna extinction in Eurasia (2021)
Late Quaternary dynamics of Arctic biota from ancient environmental genomics (2021)
Low‐carbon transition risks for finance (2021)
A major change in rate of climate niche envelope evolution during hominid history (2020)
Past extinctions of Homo species coincided with increased vulnerability to climatic change (2020)
Potential for large-scale CO2 removal via enhanced rock weathering with croplands (2020)
An Introduction to Seshat: Global History Databank (2020)
System complexity and policy integration challenges: The Brazilian Energy- Water-Food Nexus (2019)
Multi-level emulation of complex climate model responses to boundary forcing data (2019)
Revisiting Antarctic ice loss due to marine ice cliff instability (2019)
Beyond carbon pricing: policy levers for negative emissions technologies (2019)
PALEO-PGEM v1.0: a statistical emulator of Pliocene–Pleistocene climate (2019)
Climate–carbon cycle uncertainties and the Paris Agreement (2018)
Macroeconomic impact of stranded fossil fuel assets (2018)
Sensitivity of the Eocene climate to CO2 and orbital variability (2018)
Smart Cities and M3: Rapid Research, Meaningful Metrics and Co-Design (2018)
PLASIM–GENIE v1.0: a new intermediate complexity AOGCM (2016)
Building a traceable climate model hierarchy with multi-level emulators (2016)
Emulating global climate change impacts on crop yields (2015)
Worldwide impacts of climate change on energy for heating and cooling (2015)
Emulation and interpretation of high-dimensional climate model outputs (2015)
Historical and future learning about climate sensitivity (2014)
Long-term climate change commitment and reversibility: an EMIC intercomparison (2013)
Controls on the spatial distribution of oceanic δ13CDIC (2013)
A model-based constraint on CO2 fertilisation (2013)
Mitigation: Plausible mitigation targets (2011)
High frequency variability of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (2011)
The Mid-Brunhes Event and West Antarctic ice sheet stability (2011)
Energy policies avoiding a tipping point in the climate system (2011)
Precalibrating an intermediate complexity climate model (2011)
A multi-variable box model approach to the soft tissue carbon pump (2010)
Interhemispheric coupling, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and warm Antarctic interglacials (2010)
Meridional density gradients do not control the Atlantic overturning circulation (2010)
A comprehensive, multi-process box-model approach to glacial-interglacial carbon cycling (2010)
A synthesis of marine sediment core δ13C data over the last 150 000 years (2010)
A probabilistic calibration of climate sensitivity and terrestrial carbon change in GENIE-1 (2010)
Long-term climate commitments projected with climate-carbon cycle models (2008)
A wavelet-coefficient score for comparison of two-dimensional climatic-data fields (2008)
Location of potential energy sources and the export of dense water from the Atlantic Ocean (2008)
The coupling of optimal economic growth and climate dynamics (2006)
An efficient numerical terrestrial scheme (ENTS) for Earth system modelling (2006)
Millennial timescale carbon cycle and climate change in an efficient Earth system model (2006)
231Pa/230Th fractionation by ocean transport, biogenic particle flux and particle type (2005)
Focusing of an inertia - gravity wave packet by a baroclinic shear flow (2005)
Uncertainties due to transport-parameter sensitivity in an efficient 3-D ocean-climate model (2005)
Oracle-based optimization applied to climate model calibration (2005)