Reducing our emissions

1 December 2008

Today sees the publication of Committee on Climate Change’s advice to Government on the level of the first three carbon budgets and its full review of the 2050 target. The Met Office has been working closely with the committee since early 2008.

As part of our role the Met Office Hadley Centre has:

• Provided climate modelling for 10 emission scenarios to help gain a better understanding on the steps needed to be taken to avoid dangerous climate change. To do this we assessed the results of 729 different models run 350 years into the future for 10 different emission scenarios. It produced more than 2.5 million simulated years of data
• Provided climate advice on a number of issues including climate sensitivity; carbon cycle climate feedbacks, and climate impacts and its thresholds
• Co-authored the technical annex to the underpinning climate scenarios and reviewed parts of the main report.

Met Office Director of Climate Science, Professor John Mitchell, FRS OBE, said: "It is only right that we tackle the issue of human-induced climate change using expert scientific evidence. The Committee on Climate Change, working with the Met Office Hadley Centre, is now in a much better position to understand what measures to take to help us meet the challenges of avoiding dangerous climate change."

More about the Climate Change Act

Notes

• The Met Office Hadley Centre is the UK's foremost centre for climate change research. Partly funded by Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), the newly-established Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Ministry of Defence it provides information to and advice to the UK Government on climate change issues.