PhD Studentship: Analysing the impact of extreme weather on food security, NERC GW4+ DTP PhD studentship for September 2026 Entry

About the Partnership

This project is one of a number that are in competition for funding from the NERC Great Western Four+ Doctoral Training Partnership (GW4+ DTP).  The GW4+ DTP consists of the Great Western Four alliance of the University of Bath, University of Bristol, Cardiff University and the University of Exeter plus five Research Organisation partners:  British Antarctic Survey, British Geological Survey, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology,  the Natural History Museum and Plymouth Marine Laboratory.  The partnership aims to provide a broad training in earth and environmental sciences, designed to train tomorrow’s leaders in earth and environmental science. For further details about the programme please see http://nercgw4plus.ac.uk/

For eligible successful applicants, the studentships comprises:

• An stipend for 3.5 years (currently £20,780 p.a. for 2026/27) in line with UK Research and Innovation rates
• Payment of university tuition fees
• The budget for project costs is £9,000 which can be used for computer, lab, and fieldwork costs necessary for you to conduct your research.
• There is also a conference budget of £2,000 and individual Training Budget of £1,000 for specialist training

Project Aims and Methods

The occurrence and severity of extreme climate events is changing globally and has marked impacts on agriculture and food security (Falloon et al. 2022), but we currently lack a robust understanding of their impacts and how to quantify them. There have been attempts to estimate impacts based on empirical approaches (e.g. Bradshaw et al. 2022), while dynamic process-based models are also known to have limitations in representing the impacts of extreme events (e.g. (e.g. Franke et al. 2020; Li et al. 2019).   

Preliminary work involving the supervisory team, combining production and trade data with novel agroclimatic indices for extreme events has demonstrated significant challenges in representing yield shocks at national aggregate level. This studentship will therefore aim to develop improved extreme climate indices for agriculture to support resilience and adaptation planning. 

Useful recruitment links:  

For information relating to the research project please contact the lead Supervisor via: d.bebber@exeter.ac.uk 

Collaborative Partner: 

The Met Office will contribute time in-kind as a co-supervisor of the project and provide access and support to climate information and other knowledge at the Met Office relevant to the project. If useful to the project, they will also facilitate study visits for the student to the Met Office (e.g. to meet potential collaborators and for data access). 

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