Walker Institute hosts international workshop on the impacts of climate change
Release Date 05 September 2012
The University of Reading's Walker Institute is this week hosting an international workshop bringing together more than 50 of the world's top experts to discuss the impacts of climate change on water, food, biodiversity and human health and the information people need to adapt.
Professor Nigel Arnell, Director of the Walker Institute, said: "This important workshop provides an opportunity for climate change experts to compare results and will improve our understanding of the impacts of climate change on water resources, food and health, for example. It's important to do this work now so the results can feed into the next UN climate assessment report and so help to guide international climate policy."
Climate change challenges many sectors of our economy and society, and risks and opportunities will vary from place to place. However, predictions of these impacts are currently uncertain, partly because predictions of future climate are uncertain and partly because scientists have used a range of different techniques and models to estimate impacts.
The workshop this week brings together different impact modelling groups who will compare their projections of impacts, made using a consistent set of scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions, population and other assumptions. This is something that is missing from previous analyses of climate change impacts.
The workshop is part of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP): a scientific community-driven effort with the goal of providing cross-sectoral global impact assessments and led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany. The ISI-MIP project aims to present results in time for consideration in the next assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The workshop runs from 3 to 6 September 2012, and will be followed by a final meeting in Potsdam, Germany in the spring of 2013.
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For more information contact Pete Castle at the University of Reading press office on 0118 378 7391 or p.castle@reading.ac.uk or Kathy Maskell at the Walker Institute on 0118 378 7380 or k.maskell@reading.ac.uk.
Notes to editors:
The University of Reading is ranked as one of the top 25 universities in the UK by both the Guardian and Times university guides and is listed among the top 1% of universities in the world (THE World University Rankings 2011-12). Reading is home to both the world-renowned Department of Meteorology and the Walker Institute for Climate System Research.