Cambridge scientists launch 10-year polar plan to tackle climate change
The plan aims to address regional and global threats facing the planet
Scientists in Cambridge hope a new polar research strategy will tell governments around the world how to tackle the possible threats of climate change.
The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has launched a 10-year plan called ‘Polar Science for a Sustainable Planet’.
It is based on how polar regions like Antarctica respond to a warmer planet, focussing on regional and global issues.
There are five themes the survey is aiming to focus on in the strategy, which are:
- How the polar regions are responding to and mitigating climate change;
- The impact on infrastructure and society from sea level rise and space weather;
- Environmental changes across polar regions and how they are affecting society;
- How biodiversity at the poles responds to change;
- The impact of tipping points triggering extreme changes at the poles
“The strategy will not just look at how polar regions are changing because of climate warming, but what that means for rest of the world,” Professor Dame Jane Francis, director at BAS, said.
“For example, as climate warms in Antarctica, we are seeing some of the ice shelves, so ice that fringes the edges of Antarctica, are beginning to melt because of warm water that’s coming up underneath them.
“We know climate is acting a lot faster than we thought.
“There are new techniques and technologies evolving that are changing the way we work, so this is a good time to refresh what we’re doing.”
Technology such as artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicle fleets will be used to help collect and process higher quality data collected by BAS in Antarctica.
By using technologies such as these, BAS hopes it can understand what’s happening in the polar regions more thoroughly in order to inform policy makers and governments on making decisions to tackle climate change.
Dr Dominic Hodgson leads BAS’ ice sheets and climate change team.
“Our long-term data sets spanning 60 years but also our ice core and marine sediment records tell us about what natural state of planet has been over at least the last 800,000 years,” he said.
“All long-term data sets tell us the planet is changing at a much faster rate than it has ever done before.
“This is because we’re pumping extra carbon dioxide and methane, the greenhouse gases responsible for warming our planet, into the atmosphere.”
"We need to focus on these threats"
The strategy aims to find out how sustainable the current rate of climate change is for the future of human health and the planet.
But Dr Hodgson feels now is the right time for BAS to launch its ideas on what it is going to do to address the issue.
“It’s all changing and we need to understand that change and try to address ways of dealing with it, and that’s moving away from fossil fuels as a way of running our economies,” he added.
“We’re seeing ice shelves melt around Antarctica and the ice sheet flow faster into the sea.
“We’re seeing instabilities in the ice sheet that mean it could collapse much faster in a way that we haven’t anticipated before, so we need to focus on these threats.”