Prof Ed Hawkins - National Meeting video presentation

Many thanks to everyone who joined us for our first 2021 virtual taster session on 14 January. The guest speaker was Prof Ed Hawkins, Research Scientist/ Professor of Climate Science, NCAS/ University of Reading.

Ed Hawkins is a climate scientist within the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading. His research focuses on understanding past variations in weather and climate and in predicting the climate of the next few decades. He is a Lead Author for IPCC AR6.

The presentation was on Improving Atmospheric Reconstructions for Historical Extreme Events.

Our understanding of past changes in weather and climate rely on the availability of observations made over many decades. However, billions of historical weather observations are effectively lost to science as they are still only available in their original paper form in various archives around the world. The large-scale digitisation of these observations would substantially improve atmospheric circulation reconstructions back to the 1850s. Recently, volunteer citizen scientists have been assisting with the rescue of millions of these lost observations taken across western Europe over a hundred years ago. The value of these data for understanding many notable and extreme weather events will be demonstrated.

For anyone who was not able to join us, or who may want to watch back, you can now view Ed’s presentation on our YouTube channel here.

The video lasts approx. 1 hour.