Aber Climate Day

On Wednesday 2 December the Institute of Geography & Earth Sciences (IGES) at Aberystwyth University is hosting a series of lectures on climate change.

Aber Climate Day is open to all and is aimed at raising awareness of climate change issues prior to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen which is set to take place between 7 and 18 December 2009.

The event's Keynote Lecture will be given by Sir John Houghton, CBE, FRS, who was formerly Chief Executive of the Met Office and Co-chair of the Scientific Assessment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). His lecture is entitled “Science, impacts and politics of climate change”.

Sir John's lecture will followed by a series of seven mini lectures given by members of staff at IGES and Dr Clive McAlpine, Senior Research Fellow in Ecology at the University of Queensland. The speaker and subject for each lecture is as follows:

Dr Mark Whitehead, IGES: Silent Crisis: Food and Water in a Warmer World
Dr Clive McAlpine, Senior Research Fellow in Ecology, University of Queensland: A continent under stress: Interactions, feedbacks and risks associated with impact of modified land cover on Australia’s climate
Prof. Richard Lucas, IGES: The Role of Earth Observation data in Climate Change Studies
Dr Paul Brewer, IGES: Are floods getting bigger and more frequent in Wales?
Dr Alun Hubbard, IGES: Ice and climate – global meltdown?
Prof. Geoffrey Duller, IGES: The Quaternary record of climate change
Prof. Michael Hambrey, IGES: Climate change from a geological perspective.

The afternoon session takes place in lecture theatre A12 in the Hugh Owen Building on Penglais Campus and starts at 2 p.m. This will include the keynote lecture by Sir John Houghton (2:15 – 3 p.m.) and the series of mini lectures. At 6 p.m. the event will relocate to the Llandinam Building Concourse where there will be an opportunity to meet the speakers and see presentations by students. The event will close at 8.00 p.m.