Welcome
I am Professor of Climate Change in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA). My work explores the idea of climate change using historical, cultural and scientific analyses and illuminates the numerous ways in which climate change is deployed in public and political discourse. I believe it is important to understand and describe the varied ideological, political and ethical work that the idea of climate change is currently performing across our social worlds.
My research interests are therefore concerned with representations of climate change in history, culture and the media; with how knowledge of climate change is constructed (especially through the IPCC) and the interactions between climate change knowledge and policy; and with the construction, application and evaluation of climate scenarios for impacts, adaptation and integrated assessments. I welcome approaches from graduate students seeking to study for a PhD in any of these areas.
I was the founding Director (2000-2007) of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. A longer bio and full CV – including a statement of my financial interests and research funders – can be found here, along with a personal statement about climate change.
VIEW ALL LATEST POSTS (7 February 2010)
(7 February 2010) CHAOTIC WORLD OF CLIMATE TRUTH My BBC News On-line opinion essay from November 2006 is worth reading again in the light of recent developments; this essay originally created strong reactions – maybe it still will.
(3 February 2010) A CHANGING CLIMATE FOR THE IPCC Read here on SciDev.net my thoughts about the mini-crisis now afflicting the IPCC.
(30 January 2010) MIKE HULME’S QUOTES ON CLIMATE CHANGE You can follow my evolving views on the science and politics of climate change by reading these 16 short statements, all of which have appeared in the journal Nature during the period 1997-2010.
(23 January 2010) CLAIMS ABOUT MOUNTAIN GLACIERS Mountain glaciers have been very much in the news with the recent controversy about erroneous IPCC claims of disappearing Himalayan glaciers. I have a paper ‘in press’ with the journal Science as Culture about another controversy about disappearing mountain glaciers, this time those on Mt Kilimanjaro. You can read it here - Claiming and adjudicating on Kilimanjaro’s shrinking glaciers: Guy Callendar, Al Gore and extended peer communities.
(11 January 2010) NOW LAUNCHED Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change. The first issue of this new climate change review journal is now available on-line. Free global access for 2 years. 
The 12 articles in this first issue include: the Asia Pacific Partnership, regional climate models, the ethics of climate change and the language of climate change communication.
(4 December) One of The Economist magazine’s select ‘Books of the year’: Why We Disagree About Climate Change: understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity. 
The citation says “How global warming has been transformed from a physical phenomenon that is measurable and observable by scientists into a social, cultural and political one, by a professor of climate change at the (now controversial) University of East Anglia. In the crowded and noisy world of climate-change publications, this book will stand out.”
My H-Index is 33 as of November 2009 (see archived publications). Thomson Reuters reports Mike Hulme as the 10th most cited author in the world in the field of climate change, between 1999 and 2009 (ScienceWatch, Nov/Dec 2009, see Table 2).
Contact Details
School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ
T: +44 (0)1603 593162; F: +44 (0)1603 593901; E: m.hulme at uea.ac.uk
Last updated: 7 February 2010