Professor Richard Betts MBE is Head of Climate Impacts Research at the Met Office Hadley Centre and Chair in Climate Impacts at the University of Exeter. He has worked as a climate scientist for 30 years, publishing over 100 peer-reviewed papers on a wide range of topics including the carbon cycle, global climate change impacts on ecosystems, water, ice and fire, and the implications for people. He is a Lead Author with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and led the Technical Report for the UK’s 3rd National Climate Change Risk Assessment.

Talk: Our children’s climate

What climates could today’s children see when they reach the ages of their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents? What choices do humans have in this, and how can we act on this? How do scientists actually work this out, and how certain can they be? With public concern over climate change higher than ever, the atmosphere is thick with confusing claims and counter-claims on what the future holds, ranging from denial to despair.

Richard Betts returns to Bluedot to explain how scientists study and predict the changing climate, what pictures the science paints for the future, and our options to influence this.