Jennifer Catto

[For eligible students, home tuition fees plus an annual tax-free stipend.] This PhD studentship investigates how extreme weather risks may evolve in a post-net zero climate, with a focus on the UK. The project examines the future behaviour of extratropical cyclones, including damaging winds and associated flooding, and asks how these hazards can be translated into climate-risk assessment frameworks. The student will work with simulations from the Zero Emissions Commitment Model Intercomparison Project (ZECMIP) and related climate-model datasets to analyse changes in storm tracks, frequency, intensity, and compound wind-flood hazards. A central part of the research is the development of storyline-based approaches that represent plausible future hazard pathways and help capture uncertainty, high-impact low-likelihood events, and compound risks. The project is led at the University of Exeter by Professor Jennifer Catto and Dr Matthew Priestley, in collaboration with Professor Peter Watson at the University of Bristol. It also includes a CASE partnership with JBA Risk Management, giving the student exposure to industry-standard catastrophe modelling, flood and climate-risk analysis, and decision-support applications. The studentship offers substantial scope to shape the research direction. Possible areas include the physical mechanisms behind storm changes, new risk assessment methodologies, links between storylines and impact models, and better communication of future climate risk to decision-makers. The student will also receive interdisciplinary training across climate dynamics, extreme-event attribution, climate modelling, environmental risk assessment, and data analysis. The project sits within a research environment that connects climate science, risk analysis, and applied decision support for resilience planning.