Geoengineering - taking control of our planet's climate

Andy Ridgwell is currently Professor of Earth System Science at the University of California, Riverside and Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, and in a prior incarnation, a Royal Society University Research Fellow. He writes computer models of global carbon cycling and climate, focusing on both past and future controls on the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere its interaction with life on this planet. His interests span questions of evolution and extinction, causes and consequences of changes in ocean chemistry, and geoengineering of the Earths’ climate. He is a great proponent of computer (programming) literacy and greater accessibility of tools (models) to help understand the complexities (and uncertainties) in the dynamics and evolution of the Earth system. He lives in the Southern Californian mountains where he collects cats and Pokémon.

Chris Freeman is currently Professor of Peatland Biogeochemistry at Bangor University where he heads the Wolfson Peatland Carbon Capture Laboratory. He moved to Bangor in 1986, after gaining a part-time BSc at Nottingham Trent University. On gaining a PhD in Bangor, he went on to conduct postdoctoral research at the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (now formally known as CEH) until 1994. He was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship that year, and held the Fellowship in Bangor. He has since been appointed as Lecturer (2002), Senior Lecturer (2003), and then Professor (2005) at that University. His research interests focus on the causes of the unusually high capacity of peatlands for carbon sequestration, and the role of that ecosystem in influencing climate change. Chris has been a contributing author to more than 90 refereed publications.