Dr Tim Palmer FRS and Dr Tim Wheeler
Climate change is currently top of the political agenda, yet how sure are we about predictions of global warming? Indeed, if forecasters cant always get tomorrows weather right, should we trust any of the predictions of climate change? Tim Palmer, Science Chair of the UN project on Climate Variability and Predictability, will talk about the scientific methods used to quantify uncertainty in forecasting a complex chaotic system - our climate.
Many of the worlds food crops are grown in regions where variability in climate poses an enormous challenge to farmers. Crop production will become increasingly vulnerable to climate if predictions of global warming are realised. In this talk, Tim Wheeler, Director of the Plant Environment Laboratory at the University of Reading, asks - how can we estimate the impacts of climate change on crops? And, in a changing climate, can we forecast the productivity of the crops on which we depend for our food?