Dr Naomi Vaughan is Senior Lecturer in Climate Change at UEA.

She is the co-lead for the Reaching Zero Emissions Theme at the Tyndall Centre.

Nem is currently the Principal Investigator for a four-year NERC-funded consortium project, Feasibility of Afforestation and Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture Storage for Greenhouse Gas Removals (www.fab-ggr.org).  This work takes an interdisciplinary approach to the assessment of these greenhouse gas removal approaches, spanning economics, engineering, earth system modelling and societal and political perspectives.  The project works closely with a diverse set of stakeholders from government, civil society and business and industry to unpack and explore the feasibility of these approaches both globally and for the UK.  

Nem has provided oral evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee Science and Technology on greenhouse gas removal (report [https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmsctech/1454/145402.htm]) and written evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee BEIS on carbon capture and storage (report [https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmbeis/1094/109402.htm]). She was also an expert advisor to the Committee on Climate Change’s Net Zero Report [https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/net-zero-the-uks-contribution-to-stopping-global-warming/].

Nem’s research focus is on the way greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, can be removed from the atmosphere and stored for a long time.  Her research takes a very interdisciplinary approach to this topic, with active work spanning expert elicitation (Vaughan & Gough, 2016; Forster et al in press) and public perceptions (Bellamy et al, 2016; Corner et al, 2013) to quantitative approaches with the Carbon Dioxide Removal Model Intercomparision investigating the earth system response to GGR methods (Keller et al, 2018) and quantitative analysis of Integrated Assessment Model representation of BECCS (Vaughan et al, 2018).  This work builds on seminal work by Lenton & Vaughan (2009) that was the first paper to calculate the potential maximum effectiveness of the range of published geoengineering proposals in terms of radiative forcing.

Previous research projects include the EPSRC-funded Integrated Assessment of Geoengineering Proposals (IAGP) project and the EUFP7-funded European Transdisciplinary Assessment of Climate Engineering (EuTRACE) project.

Research Interests

Greenhouse Gas Removals, Carbon Dioxide Removal, Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture & Storage, Afforestation

Highlighted publications

M.Sharmina., Edelenbosch, OY., Wilson, C., Freeman, R., Gernaat, DEHJ.,  Gilbert, P., Larkin, A., Littleton, E.W., Traut, M., Van Vuuren, DP.,  Vaughan, N., Wood, FR., Le Quéré (2020), Decarbonising the critical sectors of aviation, shipping, road freight and industry to limit warming to 1.5–2°C, Climate Policy.

Waller, L., T. Rayner, J. Chilvers, C. Gough, I. Lorenzoni, A. Jordan and N. Vaughan (2020) Contested Framings of Greenhouse Gas Removal and its Feasibility: Social and Political Dimensions.  WIRES Climate Change, DOI: 10.1002/wcc.649

Vaughan, N.E., Gough, C., Mander, S., Littleton, E.W., Welfle, A., Gernaat, D.E.H.J., van Vuuren, D.P. (2018) Evaluating the use of biomass energy with carbon capture and storage in low emission scenarios Environmental Research Letters https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aaaa02

Keller, D.P., Lenton, A., Scott, V., Vaughan, N.E., Bauer, N., Ji, D., Jones, C.D., Kravitz, B., Muri, H., Zickfeld, K. (2018) The Carbon Dioxide Removal Model Intercomparison Project (CDRMIP): rationale and experimental protocol for CMIP6. Global Model Development https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-1133-2018

Gough, C., Garcia-Freites, S., Jones, C., Mander, S., Moore, B., Pereira, C., Roder, M., Vaughan, N., Welfle, A. (2018) Challenges to the use of BECCS as a keystone technology in pursuit of 1.5⁰C. Global Sustainability https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2018.3

Lawrence, M.G., Schafer, S., Muri, H., Scott, V., Oschlies, A., Vaughan, N.E., Boucher, O., Schmidt, H., Haywood, J., Scheffran, J. (2018) Evaluating climate geoengineering proposals in the context of the Paris Agreement temperature goals. Nature Communications  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05938-3

Vaughan, N.E. & Gough, C. (2016) Expert assessment concludes negative emissions scenarios may not deliver. Environmental Research Letters https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/11/9/095003

Bellamy, R., Chilvers, J. & Vaughan, N. (2016) Deliberative Mapping of options for tackling climate change: Citizens and specialists ‘open up’ appraisal of geoengineering. Public Understanding of Science https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662514548628

Pidgeon, N., Parkhill, K., Corner, A., Vaughan, N. (2013) Deliberating stratospheric aerosols for climate geoengineering and the SPICE project. Nature Climate Change https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1807

Corner, A., Parkhill, K., Pidgeon, N., Vaughan, N. E. (2013) Messing with nature? Exploring public perceptions of geoengineering in the UK. Global Environmental Change  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.06.002

Lenton, T., Vaughan, N. (2009) The radiative forcing potential of different climate geoengineering options. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-9-5539-2009

Further publications

https://www.uea.ac.uk/environmental-sciences/people/profile/n-vaughan#publicationsTab