9 August, 2021 News stories

CAMBRIDGE: British Antarctic Survey welcomes the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 1 component of its Sixth Assessment Report.  This assessment brings together the latest advances in climate science, and combines multiple lines of evidence from studies of past climate, contemporary observations, new understanding of climate processes and improved global and regional climate simulations. 

The report presents crucial new detail concerning how and why climate has changed to date and improves our understanding of human influence on a wider range of climate characteristics, including extreme events. 

Professor Dame Jane Francis, Director of British Antarctic Survey says, 

“This latest IPCC report is the state-of-the-art assessment concerning regional and global climate change and is only possible by integrating all the relevant scientific findings to date.  This highly influential report provides the evidence base and impetus to develop business and policy strategies that will help people around the world live with and adapt to change.  There is a clear message here that science is part of the solution.” 

 Professor Mike Meredith, is Head of the Polar Oceans team at British Antarctic Survey, and a Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC’s 2019 Special Report on the Ocean’s and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.  He says, 

 “As our planet overheats, its frozen regions are shrinking and its oceans are swelling. The dramatic changes in the polar regions are extremely concerning – we are seeing rapid sea ice loss in the Arctic, warming and acidification of the oceans, impacts on biodiversity and the ecosystem, and loss of ice from Antarctica and Greenland pushing up sea levels globally.  These changes are influencing all parts of the planet, and every one of its inhabitants. This new report reinforces the seriousness of these crises and drives home the urgent need to address the causes of climate change.”

Dr Anna Jones is interim Director of Science at British Antarctic Survey.  She says, 

“The polar regions have long been amongst the world’s biggest data deserts, and this has hampered greatly our efforts to understand the changes there and to make accurate projections of their futures.  In recent years there has been an enormous effort on the part of scientists from British Antarctic Survey, working in close collaboration with national and international partners in both the Antarctic and Arctic to plug that knowledge gap.  Seeing the data from these regional efforts integrated with global science and applied to the urgent problem of climate change emphasises the value of these hard-won data and reinforces that much is yet to be done if we are to meet the targets set by the Paris Agreement.” 

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Notes for editors 

Cambridge is a focal point for Climate Change research.  British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge Zero and the Cambridge Centre for Climate Science work collectively to make important contributions to our understanding of climate change