What happens to the Earth when the Sun’s activity hits a 300-year low, as is predicted in the next few decades?
Research published this morning in Scientific Reports by Dr Mathew Owens and Professor Mike Lockwood has the answer. And if you enjoy the occasional visit of the beautiful Northern Lights to latitudes as low as Britain, then sorry – it’s bad news.
Matt Owens talked about the research in this 1-minute video:
By Paul Williams, University of Reading Department of Meteorology
‘As important as political leadership is, individual people and companies will have to make key decisions to deal with the impacts of climate change’
Climate change is never far from the news headlines – but often it’s not because of the science.
As much as I think that complicated mathematical calculations about the circulation of air and water around the globe should make people stop in wonder, I fear my beliefs are not widely shared by most other people.
And they would have a point. Most people don’t talk maths over the water cooler or when down the pub, beyond adding up the cost of their drinks.
So if it’s not the science, what makes climate change so appealing to journalists? Often, it’s the politics.
News media love to observe a good old-fashioned fight, and politics is the arena where disagreements get aired every day. Not only that, but politics tends to have a bearing on how we live our lives, too.
So while the basic facts of human-caused climate change are agreed by just about all scientists working in the field, a handful of doubting politicians often hog the headlines.
By Dr Ruvi Ziegler – lecturer in law and researcher of citizenship and electoral rights at the School of Law, University of Reading
The Supreme Court will determine on Tuesday whether the Government have power to give notice pursuant to Article 50 of the Treaty on EU of the UK’s intention to withdraw from the EU without an Act of Parliament providing prior authorisation to do so. The PM has announced that she intended to ‘trigger’ Article 50 before the end of March 2017.
Many may ask: what difference will the ruling actually make?
Brexit ruling: on which side will the Supreme Court come down?
‘Food causes cancer’ stories can seem like a standard stock-in-trade. But it’s very often worth examining the science behind the sometimes alarming headlines.
Today there has been lots of attention on acrylamide (see this in The Sun and The Mirror), following warnings from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) that some home-cooked food, such as over-done or burnt toast, fried chips, or well-roasted potatoes, contain more of the potentially carcinogenic chemical.
Chips cooked for longer at higher temperatures contain more acrylamide
The fundamental research behind this story was spearheaded by the University of Reading back in 2002, when Professor Don Mottram published a paper in Nature showing the process by which acrylamide is created in some cooked food.
By Dr Tom Long, Lecturer in International Relations, School of Politics, Economics and International Relations, University of Reading
As Donald J. Trump is inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States of America, perhaps no country is more nervous than Mexico.
The United States’ southern neighbour has good reason for concern. Its economy and society are highly linked with the United States.
Trump has shaken the very pillars of the relationship. By threatening to upend the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), the new president takes aim at the heart of Mexico’s economic strategy. About 80 percent of Mexican exports go to the United States, ranging from oil to fruit to automobiles. Trump’s highly publicised battles with companies that invest and outsource in Mexico attacks one of Mexican leaders’ key plans for job creation.
Dividing wall
Perhaps most troubling of all, Trump’s plans to deport millions of undocumented Mexican migrants and then build a border wall could tear apart the increasingly closely knit social fabric of communities that straddle the US-Mexican border.
A Mexican standoff. And a wall. Picture CC Martin SoulStealer
It’s President Barack Obama’s last full day in office, before his successor, Donald Trump, formally takes over the reigns of power tomorrow.
Obama’s eight years in office have been beset by partisan rows and tensions between Democrats and Republicans, frustrating the outgoing President’s efforts to push through reforms.
So what might be Obama’s biggest regrets as he leaves office?
Clouds could be given a helpful jolt of electric charge to increase much-needed rainfall in dry parts of the world, thanks to an award-winning research proposal by scientists at the University of Reading.
The new study will investigate how charge modifies the growth of tiny water droplets into larger drops that fall as rain. It will use a supercomputer to simulate the cloud processes in detail, with specially developed robotic aircraft to sample and charge the clouds.
The Reading team was one of three groups awarded funding in this year’s US $5-million-dollar United Arab Emirates (UAE) Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science, at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday 17 January. Reading will receive US $1.5m.
The story has been given wide coverage in the region’s media. Read news story in ‘The National‘
Professor Giles Harrison is interviewed at the ceremony in Abu Dhabi
Giles Harrison, Professor of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Reading, said: “Our project is about changing the balance of charges on the tiniest cloud droplets, a neglected aspect of clouds which could revolutionise our ability to manipulate rainfall in areas that need it most.
“The UAE’s programme is ambitious and imaginative, and has already brought many international scientists together on this important topic.”
READ MORE on our News website >
The new research proposal was based on a study published in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society in May 2015.
By Professor Catriona McKinnon (Director, Leverhulme Programme in Climate Justice)
Later this week, a climate denier will become the President of the United States. Donald Trump claims that ‘nobody really knows’ whether climate change is happening, and has asserted in the past that climate change is a hoax. To make things worse, Trump has filled his cabinet with several climate deniers, and his transition team have raised fears of a ‘witch hunt’ of climate experts in the Department for Energy.
Today, a letter to the Prime Minister Theresa May, signed by leading figures in the UK climate research community – including some at the University of Reading – expressed fears about what this could do to the evidence base for global climate policy making. If the new Trump administration follows up on his campaign pledges to tear up existing US climate policies, the future could be bleak for the Paris Agreement, which may be the best and last hope for global action on climate change.
Many people in the climate research community are appalled by the climate denial of Trump and his incoming cabinet. But what, exactly, is wrong with it?
The climate denial of Trump and his cabinet is not bad science: it is not science at all
One thought might be that Trump’s climate denial is outrageously bad science. The essence of science is contestation and disagreement, and science in a state of health makes space for mavericks who strike out with bold new hypotheses, sometimes enabling great leaps forward. Should we be horrified by Trump’s denial because he does not fit this mould? This would be a serious mistake. The climate denial of Trump and his cabinet is not bad science: it is not science at all.
Such views have grown from a set of organised, well-funded, strategic, deceptive, ideological practices undertaken by a range of conservative think tanks in the US, funded by those with fossil fuel interests, and which have perverted climate legislation in America. The tactics these deniers employ include claims of conspiracy among climate scientists, appeal to fake experts, cherry-picking data, and outright deception.
High stakes of climate risks
So he says he doesn’t believe the experts. So what? To understand why Trump’s climate denial is so heinous we must be alive to the severity of the climate crisis and how little time is left to take meaningful action to contain it.