Climate computing with Met Office Chief, Prof. Penny Endersby

In this interview, I am speaking to Professor Penny Endersby, the Chief Executive Officer of the UK’s Met Office who is in charge of one of the most important climate change modelling computers in the world.

Penny takes us inside the climate model and reflects on the hard truths that the data outputs are telling us.

It is worth listening to Penny talk us through the Earth system simulator the UK has developed to navigate us through what is currently an undecided and uncertain future.

Quotes:

"...we can say, ‘this thing you might have seen once every 200 years in preindustrial times you are now going to see once in 50 years’, which I think was roughly the frequency for the Australian wildfires as we are at the moment, and in the future you are going to see them once in 10 or once in 5 years, depending on the particular emissions pathway."

"...my headline message to anybody is, the faster we can undertake the mitigation, the better it will be and if we can’t hit 1.5ºC we still want to hit 2ºC and 2 is better than 3 and 3 is better than 4!

So we should try and the time for action is now. It is urgent to do something."

https://climateseries.com/climate-change-podcast