Water, Climate Change, and Sustainability (MSc)

Cardiff University

Water is fundamental to life on Earth and the functioning of healthy ecosystems and societies. But the world faces significant challenges to sustainable water supplies. Limited usable freshwater, unevenly distributed across the world, in addition to climate-driven floods and droughts, impacts economies, increases conflict potential, and degrades ecosystems, making future water sustainability unpredictable. To address these urgent challenges the world needs graduates with expertise in freshwater problems. This MSc will give you a solid understanding of water in terms of the hydrological cycle, its forcing by climate and climate change, partitioning of water between the surface and subsurface, water availability to and use by ecosystems, and the sustainable management of water-related hazards and water resources. You’ll explore the social context of water problems in terms of environmental sustainability, as well as knowledge of the climate system and the regional expressions of climate change and develop the skills to analyse and quantify sustainability of water resources and hazards, to handle and analyse large datasets that are proliferating across the globe, and to engage with numerical models. The interdisciplinary nature of the programme will open up potential career pathways in academia, development, government, or environmental consultancy. You would be well equipped to address global challenges including those associated with sustainable development goals, as well as national and subnational environmental priorities in countries around the world. Some module combinations are not available due to the carefully constructed programme design.

School of Earth and Environmental Sciences