Fiona's Red Kite has been awarded a contract to deliver climate change policy briefings and engage stakeholders for the £23M QUEST research programme on "Quantifying Earth system processes and feedbacks for better informed assessments of alternative futures of the global environment". This National Environment Research Council programme's themes include the interactions between land and marine life and climate change, global climate change impacts, reducing GHGs through land-use change and understanding climate over geological time scales, with projects on biofuels, wildfires, forestry, volcanoes and fisheries. Fiona is working with project stakeholders from UK government, private and third sector and academics from UK and Europe to explain the science and interpret policy-maker needs.

UK national organisations facing the challenge of climate change and weather impacts seek professional guidance to support evidence-based decision making, strategic planning, business planning and awareness raising within their organisations and with their stakeholders.

Fiona has delivered a project on Climate Change and Social Justice for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a charity aiming to understand the causes of social disadvantage in the UK, to identify ways of overcoming them and demonstrate practical solutions.  Fiona was able to respond quickly to its request for an overview paper, and to facilitate a workshop with key stakeholders.  Her work has been used to design an innovative climate change research programme.

Fiona managed the Royal Meteorological Society’s contribution to the Overlay Journal Infrastructure for Meteorological Sciences (OJIMS) project. Her main role was the development of sustainable business models for both a new Journal of Meteorological Data and an Open-Access Repository for documents related to the meteorological sciences.  The principal funder of the project is JISC, with complementary support from NCAS and NERC.   She has lead the examination of potential benefits of the journal and repository, and explored and tested them with users, from the scientific community and from commercial and public sector organisations.  A demo of an overlay journal, to test key concepts, was developed and the experience of run-throughs analysed.  User feedback from the survey and demo and a review of digital publishing literature highlighted issues around version control, review processes, quality assurance, pricing models, copyright/licensing, uptake of repositories, marketing and launch, citation, and the evolution of the scholarly process.  The work was undertaken in a partnership with two members of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (the British Atmospheric Data Centre and the University of Leeds).

UK national organisations facing the challenge of climate change and weather impacts seek professional guidance to support evidence-based decision making, strategic planning, business planning and awareness raising within their organisations and with their stakeholders.

Fiona is collaborating with hydrologists and engineers at Hyder consulting to assist the National Trust in developing a climate change adaptation plan for its world-renowed property at Mount Stewart Northern Ireland. The site is in a coastal zone and overlooks an intertidal habitat of international importance. Its Gardens are of major cultural importance to Northern Ireland and this popular site is financially important to National Trust Northern Ireland.