Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
The Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change — named in honour of George Hadley — is one of the United Kingdom's leading centres for the study of scientific issues associated with climate change. It is part of, and based at the headquarters of the Met Office in Exeter.
Foundation
The Hadley Centre was founded in 1990, having been approved by the then British Prime Minister Mrs Margaret Thatcher and was first named the Hadley Centre for Climate Research and Prediction but subsequently renamed on various occasions.[1] [2]
Major aims
The Centre has several major aims:
- To understand physical, chemical and biological processes within the climate system and develop state-of-the-art climate models which represent them
- To use climate models to simulate global and regional climate variability and change over the last 100 years and to predict changes over the next 100 years
- To monitor global and national climate variability and change
- To attribute recent changes in climate to specific factors
- To understand, with the aim of predicting, the natural inter-annual to decadal variability of climate
In 2005 the centre hosted the international scientific conference Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change.
The Met Office employs over 1500 staff, with approximately 200 working in its climate research unit. Most of its funding comes from contracts with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), other United Kingdom Government departments and the European Commission.
The climate model (HADCM3) developed by the centre is used for climate change research purposes across the world.
Research projects based on Hadley Centre climate models
The volunteer computing project ClimatePrediction.net is a research team based at the University of Oxford conducting research into global climate change using adapted versions of the climate models developed at the Hadley Centre. Individuals can participate in the research efforts by donating spare computer resources to aid their research.
The PRECIS (Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies) project enables scientists from the around the globe to run a regional climate model towards carrying our research into climate change.
See also
- Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change: A Scientific Symposium on Stabilisation of Greenhouse Gases — 2005 international conference
- Vicky Pope, head of the Hadley Centre's climate predictions programme
References
- ↑ How Margaret Thatcher Made the Conservative Case for Climate Action, James West, Mother Jones (magazine), Mon Apr. 8, 2013
- ↑ An Inconvenient Truth About Margaret Thatcher: She Was a Climate Hawk, Will Oremus, Slate (magazine) April 8 2013
External links
- Met Office Hadley Centre homepage
- Hadley Centre data provision
- Sponsor of Terra quasi-incognita: beyond the 2°C line. Download video, audio, slides International Climate Conference in Oxford, UK from September 28–30, 2009
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