Determining the temporal relationships of large-scale atmospheric and oceanic fluctuations is crucial for advancing understanding of the mechanisms controlling heat transfer between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The thermal bipolar see-saw caused asynchronous interhemispheric climatic changes during the last glacial period and Southern Ocean marine records and the Antarctic ice-cores are valuable archives recording this past climatic variability. Ascertaining the precise phasing of the climatic variability between these records provides crucial boundary conditions for testing models simulating the future behaviour of the bipolar see-saw and assessing potential large-scale oceanic and atmospheric reorganisations under anthropogenic forcing. In addition, establishing tighter constraints on phase relationships between sedimentary evidence for deep-water ventilation of CO2, and ice-core evidence for past atmospheric CO2 variations is key to determining the future response of the Earth system to rising CO2 levels. This project will address this challenge by ascertaining the rate, timing and phasing of Southern Hemisphere climatic changes between 40-10 kyr BP using tephrochronology to independently synchronise the palaeoclimatic sequences using common horizons of volcanic ash as time-synchronous tie-lines. Recognition of ash horizons not visible upon core inspection (cryptotephras) within sequences increasingly distal from volcanic regions has increased the scope of this technique. Cryptotephra identification methods will be used to trace ash horizons visible in Antarctic ice-cores into a marine core network from the Southern Ocean Atlantic sector and to trace previously unknown horizons identified in the marine realm into the Antarctic Atlantic sector EPICA DML ice-core. This region has a high potential for synchronisation due to the number of upwind volcanic regions that have previously deposited volcanic ash over the ice-sheet and Southern Ocean.

In recent years there has been growing concern about the impact of diffuse source pollution on river, estuarine and coastal water quality and particularly with regard to non-compliance of bathing waters. Climate change, and particularly more intense storms in the bathing season, has led to increased compliance failure of bathing waters, e.g. last summer saw widely publicised beach failure occurrences at Amroth and Rhyl. Hydro-environmental impact assessment modelling studies, regularly undertaken by specialist consulting environmental companies, are generally regarded as having two fundamental shortcomings in model simulations, which can lead to erromneous environmental impact assessment outcomes. These shortcomings will be addressed in this project and include: (i) improving the computational linking of catchment, river and estuarine-coastal models to ensure momentum and mass conservation across the link boundary, and (ii) improving the kinetic decay process representation in deterministic models, to include the impact of salinity, irradiance, turbidity and suspended sediment levels. The main aim of this research project will therefore be to develop and validate linked hydro-environmental deterministic models to predict improved fluxes and concentration levels of faecal bacterial from catchment to coast, using dynamic decay rates related to a range of primary variables. This main objective will be achieved by: (i) setting up linked catchment, river and estuary-coastal models to predict flow and solute transport processes from Cloud to Coast; (ii) linking these models through an Open MI system and refining the link to include momentum conservation; (iii) extending the Cardiff Research Centre's Severn and Ribble river basin models to include catchments, (iv) developing and testing the Severn model against scaled laboratory model data for conservative tracer measurements, obtained using an idealised catchment-river-estuary physical model at Cardiff University, (v) undertaking a detailed analysis of earlier field studies (undertaken by the main supervisor and Professor David Kay, Aberystwyth) on the impact of turbidity and sediment adsorption on bacterial levels in the Severn estuary, with the aim of developing new formulations linking bacterial concentration levels with: salinity, irradiance, turbidity and suspended sediment), (vi) including the new formulations for bacterial decay (in the form of T90 values) in the linked models for river and estuary-coastal systems and to investigate the sensitivity of the receiving water concentration levels to these parameters, and (vii) studying briefly the effects of various renewable energy structures in the Severn estuary (including the Severn Barrage) on the receiving water faecal bacterial levels, particularly in terms of establishing the impact of the new linking methodology and the dynamic decay rates on the predicted concentration levels. The outcomes from this study will be published in journal and conference papers and presented in talks and lectures on the Centre's activities relating to marine renewable energy and particularly for the Severn estuary.

This project aims to explore secondary data created from recent UK legislation which requires organisations to publish their Gender Pay Gap (GPG) to understand the determinants of the UK GPG among companies. It will build on international literature relating to the GPG and apply well-established econometric methods for panel data.

Misuse of alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs by young people impacts on their health in the short and long term, and is also associated with anti-social behaviour, crime and drop out from school. Many risk and protective factors for substance misuse in young people are located in the family. The Strengthening Families 10-14 UK programme aims to strengthen areas of family life that protect against substance misuse (parenting, communication, and young people?s resilience skills). The study will identify whether the programme delays or reduces substance use, and collect information that will help in wider implementation of the programme if successful.