Natalie S Lord

MSci Geography - University of Bristol (2006-2010)

PhD - University of Bristol (2013-2017)
Thesis: Projecting long-term past and future climate change within the context of post-closure performance assessments for disposal of radioactive waste.
Funded by Radioactive Waste Management Limited (RWM).


I'm a Research Associate involved in a variety of research, ranging from modelling changes in climatic extremes over the next century, to modelling changes in past and future climate on timescales of hundreds of thousands of years or longer, to looking at tropical cyclone representation in climate models. My PhD focussed on developing modelling approaches to allow simulation of climate evolution occurring over hundreds of thousands of years, and the potential implications of future long-term changes in climate for post-closure safety assessments for disposal of high-level radioactive wastes. I'm currently a member of the Climate Dynamics and Bristol Research Initiative for the Dynamic Global Environment (BRIDGE) research groups, and the Cabot Institute.

Before joining the University of Bristol, I worked as an Assistant Data Manager at a site investigation/environmental consultancy company. My primary role involved developing the data management and graphical reporting software used by the company (gINT Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental software), as well as user support and troubleshooting, writing of technical documents, training and marketing.

I am currently part of the Emergence of Climate Hazards (EMERGENCE) consortium, led by the University of Exeter, investigating how extreme heat stress (high temperature, high humidity) events in the CMIP6 climate models may vary in the future in response to anthropogenic climate change, and the implications that these changes may have for different regions.

My past research (PhD and postdoctoral) has focussed on modelling the long-term evolution of climate, ranging from several thousand years up to a million years, using a statistical climate emulator trained on GCM model output. On these long timescales, variations in the three main orbital parameters (eccentricity, obliquity, precession) act as a significant forcing on climate. Changes in the natural carbon cycle also need to be considered, along with the impacts of future anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This research includes modelling future climate change, in order to assess its potential implications for post-closure performance assessments for radioactive waste repositories, as well as modelling past changes in climate, such as those that occurred during the late Pliocene and the Pleistocene. I compare my modelled climate results for past periods with palaeoclimate data reconstructed from climate proxies, as a way of validating the modelling approaches used. I have also carried out some work exploring the impacts of horizontal model resolution on the representation of tropical cyclones in the HadAM3 climate model.

My PhD and postdoctoral (2017-2018) research was funded by and carried out in connection with various nuclear industry companies, including RWM (UK), Posiva Oy (Finland), and Svensk Karnbranslehantering AB (SKB; Sweden), and National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste (Nagra; Switzerland). The climate projections for the next million years produced as part of my postdoctoral research will be used by the Finnish and Swedish nuclear waste authorities (Posiva Oy and SKB) as an integral part of the Safety Cases for their high-level radioactive waste repositories located at Olkiluoto and Forsmark.

The methodology and models developed during my PhD, and the subsequent projections of climate evolution over the next million years, contributed to the report "Development of a Common Framework for Addressing Climate Change in Post-Closure Radiological Assessment of Solid Radioactive Waste Disposal", written by Working Group 6 of the MOdelling and DAta for Radiological Impacts Assessments (MODARIA) international research programme, and published by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

I have also co-written a review commissioned by Nagra (Switzerland), focusing on long-term past and future climate modelling in the context of geological evolution on timescales pertinent for waste repositories.