The 2019 Ronald Ross Series: “Climate Change: What Is Happening and What We Can Do About It” – Prof. Joanna D. Haigh
Event Details:
- Date: Tuesday 17 December 2019
- Time: Starts 18:00.
- Venue: The Cyprus Institute – Events Room, 1st floor, Novel Technologies Building, Athalassa Campus
- Speaker: Prof. Joanna D. Haigh, CBE, FRS, FRMetS, Former co-Director of the Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London
The lecture will be in English and the event is open to the public.
Live streaming is facilitated by the CySTEM project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under Grant Agreement No. 667942.
Abstract
The world is warming at a rate faster that has ever been observed in the past. Overwhelmingly scientists are of the opinion that this is largely due to the effect of gases released into the atmosphere by human activities. How can we be sure that this is the case? Does it matter? What can we say about the future?
This talk will look at the scientific evidence for climate change in the context of natural variations and it will discuss how increasing concentrations of “greenhouse gases” (GHGs), especially carbon dioxide, create an imbalance in the Earth’s energy budget with impacts on temperature, sea level and weather patterns.
We will see how basic physics can be used to construct the computer models which are employed to investigate climate processes and look at potential future impacts across the world of increasing GHGs. We will go on to consider what needs to be done to reduce GHG emissions in order for the world to avoid dangerous levels of warming, and where we are heading following the United Nations climate change agreements.
About the speaker
Joanna Haigh CBE FRS is a climate scientist and was, until her recent retirement, co-Director of the Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London. Previous to that she was Head of Imperial’s Physics Department. She has published widely in the area of climate modelling and radiative forcing of climate change; her work on how changes in solar activity influence the climate has been particularly influential.
