Monday 22 and Tuesday 23 February 2010
Organised by Professor Euan Nisbet, Professor Peter S. Liss FRS, Dr Andrew C. Manning and Professor Ralph Keeling
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Professor Philippe Ciais, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, France
Philippe Ciais is a senior researcher at CEA (Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique) and deputy director of the LSCE (Climate and Environmental Sciences Laboratory). In the early 1990's, he confirmed the existence of a large sink of CO2 in the North Hemisphere terrestrial vegetation using isotopic measurements. His research interests include the carbon cycle, global change and their interactions with society. Philippe Ciais authored or co-authored more than 150 articles in A-ranking scientific journals, including many in Nature and Science. Philippe Ciais is co-chairman of Integrated Global Carbon Observations task of GEO, and co-chair of the Global Carbon Project. He acted as a lead author of IPCC AR4 and SRLULUCF reports, and coordinated several European research projects. Since 2006, he is the coordinator of the preparatory phase of ICOS (Integrated Carbon Observation System), a research infrastructure dedicated to monitoring the greenhouse budget of Europe and adjacent regions.
Professor Corinne Le Quéré , University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey
Corinne Le Quéré is Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia and researcher at the British Antarctic Survey. She uses numerical models and data analysis to quantify the interactions between marine ecosystems, biogeochemical cycles and climate for time scales going from one to several hundred thousand years. She co-chairs the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists who co-ordinate international research on the global carbon cycle. This group published annual CO2 budgets since 2005 and identified the very fast growth in CO2 emissions in recent years and their underlying drivers.
Professor Ingeborg Levin, Universitaet Heidelberg, Germany
Ingeborg Levin studied Physics at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg later gaining her PhD at the Institut für Umweltphysik, University of Heidelberg. She then went on to become a Researcher and in 1986 became Head of the Carbon Cycle group at the Institut für Umweltphysik. Ingeborg Levin was awarded Venia Legendi for Physics, and approval as Privatdozentin in August 1994. In 2005, she was approved as Außerplanmäßige Professorin by the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. Ingeborg Levin's main research interests are the study of the biogeochemical cycles of long-lived greenhouse gases and their recent and past changes using isotope tracer measurements and global and regional modelling.
Professor Marina Lévy, LOCEAN-IPSL, CNRS, France
After graduating from Ecole Polytechnique, Marina Lévy prepared her PhD thesis on the oceanic carbon cycle in the Mediterranean Sea at the University of Paris 6. In 1998, she worked under a post-doctoral fellow-ship at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, and obtained, in 1999, a permanent position at CNRS. She was awarded the CNRS bronze medal in 2004 for her pioneering work on the interactions between sub-mesoscale physics and phytoplankton productivity. Her approach combines numerical modelling, satellite data and field observations. She is now head of the Bio-Physical Interactions group at the Oceanography and Climatology Laboratory LOCEAN in Paris. She is PI of the project TANGGO (Toward AN eddying Global Green Ocean) which aims at improving the predictability of primary production, and involves over 25 institutes. She is a regular visiting scientist of the Earth Simulator Center, in Yokohama, Japan and of the National Institute of Oceanography in Goa, India.
Professor David MacKay FRS, University of Cambridge
David MacKay FRS is a Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Cambridge. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and then obtained his PhD in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology. He returned to Cambridge as a Royal Society research fellow at Darwin College. He is internationally known for his research in machine learning, information theory, and communication systems. He has taught Physics in Cambridge since 1995. He is author of the critically acclaimed book, "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air".
Professor Justus Notholt, University of Bremen, Germany
Prof. Dr. Justus Notholt graduated in Solid State Physics at the University of Kassel in 1985. In his diploma thesis he studied the structure of amorphous semiconductors using X-ray spectroscopy. He received his PhD degree in Physical Chemistry at the same University in 1989 in the field of Surface 
Enhanced Raman Scattering, working in the area surface science and electrochemistry. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Joint Research Centre of the EC in Ispra/Italy, he switched to atmospheric science where he advanced a DOAS-system for simultaneous measurements of atmospheric trace gas and aerosol concentrations. In September 1990, he moved to the Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research. There he began atmospheric trace gas observations in both Polar Regions and developed measurement and analysis techniques for using the moon as infrared light source during the polar night. Furthermore he started ship borne FTIR measurements to obtain the latitudinal variability of atmospheric trace gases. In April 2002 he obtained a professorship at the University of Bremen. His activities now comprise development and application of spectroscopic observations from the microwave via the infrared to the visible spectral region, using ground-based and satellite instruments. Scientific topics are greenhouse gas observations, stratospheric and mesospheric studies, and sea-ice remote sensing.
Lord Oxburgh FRS, House of Lords
Ron Oxburgh FRS (Lord Oxburgh of Liverpool) has worked as an academic, a civil servant and in business. Between 1987 and 1993 he was Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence and from 1993 to 2001 Rector of Imperial College. He was non-executive Chairman of Shell Transport and Trading until 2005 and is currently President of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, Chairman of Falck Renewables and of 2OC. He is a former Chairman of the Trustees of the Natural History Museum and of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology. He is Foreign member of the US, Australian and German Academies of Science.
Dr Peter Rayner, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, France
Peter Rayner studied theoretical physics at the University of Melbourne. 
He obtained his doctorate from the same university in 1991 for his studies on glacial-interglacial cycles. In 1989 he was awarded a CSIRO Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Division of Atmospheric Research (DAR) which included a one year stint at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. In 1991, Peter joined the Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at Princeton University where he began his research on the global carbon cycle. In 1994, Peter joined the Cooperative Research Centre for Southern Hemisphere Meteorology (CRC-SHM) as a member of DAR. In 2004 he moved to the Laboratory for the Science of Climate and Environment in France. In 2002, Peter was awarded the Priestley Medal of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographical Society, the major research award in this field within Australia. In 2004 he was noted by Essential Science Indicators as among the top percentile of cited authors in the Earth Sciences. He has published over 70 papers in leading journals and has contributed to the last 3 IPCC reports.
Sir Crispin Tickell, University of Oxford
Sir Crispin Tickell KCVO GCMG is a leading international authority on climate change and environmental issues. The holder of over twenty honorary doctorates, a senior government advisor, and member of numerous committees and working parties, his areas of expertise range from Global Warming to Potentially Hazardous Near-Earth Objects. Businesses, scientists and academic institutions throughout the world have benefited from his wisdom and practical analysis.
Having worked extensively on projects concerned with climate change, population, and biodiversity, Sir Crispin has advised Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair, for whom he served on two task forces.
Professor Andrew Watson FRS, University of East Anglia
Andrew Watson is a Professor at the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, and has recently been appointed a Royal Society Research Professor for the 2010 anniversary of the Society. He researches the global carbon cycle, and the processes that affect Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide, both through earth history and on the modern, human-disturbed planet. He studied planetary atmospheres at the University of Michigan, before returning to the UK and working at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, where he developed tracer techniques that enabled large scale ocean experiments to study mixing, gas exchange, and the role of iron as a limiting nutrient. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a member of NERC council, and recipient of the European Geophysical Union's Nansen medal for achievements in marine science.
Professor Robert Watson, DEFRA
Professor Watson's career has evolved from research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory: California Institute of Technology, to a US Federal Government program manager/director at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to a scientific/policy advisor in the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), White House, to a scientific advisor, manager and chief scientist at the World Bank, to a Chair of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, the Director for Strategic Direction for the Tyndall centre, and Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. In parallel to his formal positions he has chaired, co-chaired or directed international scientific, technical and economic assessments of stratospheric ozone depletion, biodiversity/ecosystems (the GBA and MA), climate change (IPCC) and agricultural S&T (IAASTD). Professor Watson's areas of expertise include managing and coordinating national and international environmental programs, research programs and assessments; establishing science and environmental policies - specifically advising governments and civil society on the policy implications of scientific information and policy options for action; and communicating scientific, technical and economic information to policymakers. During the last twenty years he has received numerous national and international awards recognizing his contributions to science and the science-policy interface, including in 2003 - Honorary "Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George" from the United Kingdom.
Professor Ray Weiss, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, USA
Ray Weiss is a Distinguished Professor of Geochemistry and Associate Dean at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. He holds a BS in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology and a PhD in earth sciences from Scripps. His career has been devoted to the use of chemical and isotopic measurements to study natural processes in the oceans, lakes and the atmosphere. Among his principal research accomplishments are: the first experimental proof of the existence of deep-sea hydrothermal vents; using dissolved atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons to determine the rates of ventilation, transport and mixing processes in the deep ocean and in deep lakes; discovery of the global rates of increase and distributions of atmospheric nitrous oxide and other greenhouse gases; and calibrating the global abundance of the atmospheric hydroxyl radical, the atmosphere's primary cleansing agent. Professor Weiss is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the American Geophysical Union. He leads the measurement component of the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE), an international program to trace and model the emissions, global distributions and atmospheric lifetimes of a wide range of anthropogenic and natural greenhouse gases and ozone depleting substances.