Stuart Jenkins

I completed a Master's degree in Physics at Wadham College, University of Oxford (2014-2018). In the latter stages of my degree I became interested in the physical processes governing planet Earth, and in particular in the physical processes underpinning the behaviour of the atmosphere and ocean system. I completed a fruitful research project over the summer of 2017 looking into the different ways of comparing the impact of a range of greenhouse gases using metrics with Prof. Myles Allen. Work continued in the area of Climate Change Physics throughout the final year of my Masters resulting in the publishing of papers on the alternate metrics and carbon budgets to ambitious mitigation targets. Work through the summer of 2018 resulted in the production of a figure for the Summary for Policymakers document of the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5℃. I am a named author on the Technical Summary of Chapter 1 of the same report, having also contributed to the production of figures in the first chapter.

I want to bridge the gap between physical climate problems and the policy discussions that follow them. In order to do this I would like to take a multi-disciplinary approach to my research, aiming to work on a climate change problem between the Environmental Change Institute in the School of Geography and the Department of Physics at Oxford. Current interests include:

The long-term behaviour of the carbon and heat cycles in the ocean, and their resulting impacts on multi-century emissions pathways compatible with 'stabilized warming',

Defining an adaptive mitigation strategy which is consistent with a given level of warming. How can we use a real-time assessment of the state of the climate system to adjust emissions forecasts as we learn more about key climate behaviours?

 

Jenkins, S., R. J. Millar, N. Leach, and M. R. Allen. 'Framing Climate Goals in Terms of Cumulative CO2-Forcing-Equivalent Emissions'. Geophysical Research Letters 45, no. 6 (28 March 2018): 2795-2804. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL076173.

Leach, Nicholas J., Richard J. Millar, Karsten Haustein, Stuart Jenkins, Euan Graham, and Myles R. Allen. 'Current Level and Rate of Warming Determine Emissions Budgets under Ambitious Mitigation'. Nature Geoscience 11, no. 8 (August 2018): 574. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-018-0156-y.

M. Allen, O. P. Dube, W. Solecki, F. Aragón-Durand, W. Cramer, S. Humphreys, M. Kainuma, J. Kala, N. Mahowald, Y. Mulugetta, R. Perez, M. Wairiu, K. Zickfeld, 2018, Framing and Context - Supplementary Material. In: Global warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty [V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, H. O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J. B. R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M. I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor, T. Waterfield (eds.)]. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15 In Press.