Cosy Science Presents: Predicting Future Climate

Do we know what the future will hold? We live in a society that makes forecasts on everything from sports to politics. Yet in few fields is the science of predictability as well studied as in meteorology. In the edition of Cosy Science, we will be looking at climate projections. Whilst we are chatting in the pub, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be arguing over each word in their final session before the release of a new series of climate projection out to the year 2100. We will talk about how they have up with these projections (both the logistics and science); what they can tell us (what assumptions and scenarios have been used); and how much we should believe them (what is the uncertainty in them).

Dr Chris Brierley is a climate modeller with a background in uncertainty quantification and palaeoclimates. He gained his PhD in Meteorology at the University of Reading in 2007, studying the effects of parameter uncertainty on climate projections. Since then he has been a Post-Doctoral Associate and Associate Research Scientist in the Yale University Geology and Geophysics department, working on tropical climate change. He is now a researcher and professor of climatology at UCL, where he works on how uncertainties in ocean model parameter values affect the total uncertainty of climate projections.