Why clear skies over the Pacific are speeding up climate change

Global warming is accelerating as time passes. Models predict that trend is set to continue even if we manage to rein in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere – but why? On World Oceans Day, Dr Paulo Ceppi explains that it’s all down to increasingly cloudless skies over the Pacific Ocean.

Dr Paulo Ceppi won the 2018 Research Outputs Prize (Environment Theme) for this work, which the judges described as “world leading” and “of international significance in climate science” because it lends further confidence to models used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Read the full paper.

The University of Reading is the most represented institution globally in the first working group of authors chosen to produce the next IPCC climate change report, with six academics named as lead authors. Due to be completed in 2022, the 6th Assessment Report (AR6) brings together hundreds of experts from around the world to inform international action to mitigate climate change and reduce its damaging effects on the planet.

Reading’s Department of Meteorology includes some of the world’s leading scientists on climate change, some of whom are funded by the Met Office and National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS). The department was ranked 2nd in the world for research in Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences by the Center for World University Rankings in the 2017 rankings by subject.