Projects per year
Personal profile
Areas of Expertise
Adam is an earth and climate scientist working across a range of climate change mitigation and adaptation projects, in roles combining research, rapid evidence assessment and synthesis, project management, stakeholder engagement, and knowledge exchange.
Biography
Adam is interested in driving research impact by making research findings more useful to national and local decision makers, other researchers, and engaged climate-aware audiences. As project manager for the OpenLAND and OpenCLIM projects, Adam works with colleagues to understand how stakeholders use climate datasets, what questions they need to answer, and how. This informs the research methodology and the format of project outputs to maximise their useability.
In the MACC Hub project (Maximising UK Adaptation to Climate Change), Adam is developing local climate risk reports and stakeholder workshops to assist local organisations to better understand climate risks and strengthen their adaptive capacity.
Previously, Adam researched satellite observed trends in burned area, fire–climate indicators (FWI, CHI, NDVI, VPD), and emissions, for the Mediterranean region, to investigate the balance of climatic and socioeconomic drivers of these trends.
During COVID-19, Adam collaborated on research to estimate the temporary effect of COVID restrictions on daily global CO2 emissions. He developed a confinement index, representing the relative impact of COVID policies on domestic activities for dozens of countries. This work was included in the Global Carbon Budget estimates for 2020 and 2021.
Adam is an expert in gathering and summarising latest research and led a series of reviews by international teams of scientists, published through the ScienceBrief platform. This was a tool for keeping up with the latest science emerging on climate change impacts, climate projections and understanding.
Key Research Interests
Adam's research includes greenhouse gas emissions and climate change mitigation, synthesis and rapid evidence assessment of climate change impacts, climate resilience and climate adaptation, and climate change risk assessment.
Research Group or Lab Membership
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
Keywords
- Climate Change / Climate Science
- Climate change adaptation
- Climate resilience
- climate mitigation
- Greenhouse Gas Emissions
- Climate impacts
- Climate change risk assessment
Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
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Surveying the evidence landscape for UK-focused spatial climate risk assessment.
Nicholls, R., Jones, M. & Smith, A.
6/02/23 → 15/05/23
Project: Consultancy
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A global assemblage of regional prescribed burn records — GlobalRx
Hsu, A., Jones, M. W., Thurgood, J. R., Smith, A. J. P., Carmenta, R., Abatzoglou, J. T., Anderson, L. O., Clarke, H., Doerr, S. H., Fernandes, P. M., Kolden, C. A., Santín, C., Strydom, T., Le Quéré, C., Ascoli, D., Castellnou, M., Goldammer, J. G., Guiomar, N. R. G. N., Kukavskaya, E. A., Rigolot, E., & 27 others , 1 Jul 2025, In: Scientific Data. 12, 1083.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile -
Reflections on delivering place-based climate risk data in support of local adaptation decisions
Smith, A. J. P., Minns, A., Nicholls, R. J., Beswick, A., Jenkins, K., Avrutin, S. & Robson, C., 2025, In: Climate Risk Management. 48, 100701.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile4 Downloads (Pure) -
The role of local knowledge in enhancing climate change risk assessments in rural Northern Ireland
Kennedy-Asser, A. T., Andrews, O. D., Montgomery, J., Jenkins, K. L., Smith, B. A. H., Lewis, E., Birkinshaw, S. J., He, H., Pywell, R. F., Brown, M. J., Redhead, J. W., Warren, R., Robson, C., Smith, A. J. P., Nicholls, R. J., Mullan, D. & McGuire, R., Apr 2025, In: Climate Risk Management. 48, 100702.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile2 Downloads (Pure) -
GlobalRx: A global assemblage of regional prescribed fire records for use in assessments of climate change impacts
Hsu, A., Thurgood, J., Smith, A., Anderson, L. O., Clarke, H., Doerr, S. H., Fernandes, P., Kolden, C., Santín, C., Strydom, T., Jones, M. & GlobalRx Consortium, 9 Mar 2024.Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review
Open Access -
Broadening scientific engagement and inclusivity in IPCC reports through collaborative technology platforms
De-Gol, A. J., Le Quéré, C., Smith, A. J. P. & Le Quéré, M. A., 21 Dec 2023, In: npj Climate Action. 2, 49.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile7 Downloads (Pure)