Julia Slingo is to give the Cabot lecture in Bristol on 4 February (details here). Here's the trailer:
The impact of human activity on our climate has become increasingly clear: with the IPCC stating that “Human influence on the climate system is unequivocal”. It has become clear that we are taking the planet into uncharted territory and changing the risk of extreme weather and climate events. Our exposure to these risks is also changing as a result of changes in how we live and a rapidly growing global population.
Climate science is now moving beyond questions of global average surface temperature change, and is now responding to questions about whether extreme weather such as heat waves, wet winters or flash flooding will become more or less frequent as the climate changes. This change in thinking requires the science to move on to more complex and high resolution simulations of what our climate is likely to be like across timescales from decades to centuries ahead.
This information allows society to make informed decisions about climate change mitigation and adaptation, and will help communities to prepare for weather and climate extremes across timescales.
Professor Dame Julia Slingo, Met Office Chief Scientist, will give this Cabot Institute lecture co-organised by Bristol Festival of Ideas and part of Bristol 2015. The talk will include a panel discussion from some leading Cabot academics and an opportunity for questions from the audience at the end. Julia Slingo will be made a special Cabot Institute Distinguished Fellowship in honour of her work in climate science at the event.
You have to laugh at the idea of global warming science moving beyond such simplistic questions as whether the globe's surface is actually warming. No doubt this change of emphasis is unconnected to the failure of the said surface to actually, erm, get any warmer.
The correspondent who alerted me to this event wondered if the Q&A session would consist solely of planted questions, as was the case for Mann's appearance. It's more than likely. Public servants are not there to be questioned by mere members of the public.