Insights from Stuart Brocklehurst, Deputy Vice-Chancellor at one of the world’s leading authorities in climate research, the University of Exeter
Working on climate change requires a particular form of mental juggling, holding at once in your mind both the stark and terrifying reality of our perilous situation alongside optimism and belief that positive change is within our control.
In the face of that reality, it’s increasingly hard to remain positive. Models offer only tightly-constrained predictions, not exact pictures of the future. The gross level of global warming, averaged over several years, has been captured well by models, but we’re now seeing shorter-term observations outpace those predictions. Whilst we’re still in the foothills of global warming’s impacts, sharp increases in flooding and forest fires, shrinking polar sea ice and glaciers, and increases in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, give us a foretaste of what lies ahead.
We risk these and other affects accelerating exponentially as a series of ‘tipping points’ in natural systems trigger: as the tundra, which sequesters seven times the car
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