Global climate change scientist Professor Rachel Warren is internationally respected for her research but she could probably walk down any street in any country without people realising the scale and reach of her work. In this episode Rachel explains how an early interest in bird conservation marked the start of her awareness of the environment. While studying physics and the natural sciences at Cambridge University, the global scale of environmental problems and her growing appreciation of the need to conserve the atmosphere – the air that we breathe – drove her to join research projects examining harmful CFCs and acid rain.
Jump forward to the present day and Rachel's research papers are trusted by world governments and the United Nations, and have been cited by fellow academics more than 27,000 times worldwide. Her work helps formulate international agreements and policies. Today she is focussed on quantifying the risks we would all avoid through climate change mitigation and the risks climate change poses to biodiversity and as a professor at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia (UEA), Rachel is encouraging the next generation of climate scientists to join her. She emphasises the opportunities the Tyndall Centre offers young scientists as they build networks within the research community and the advantages the UEA's long-standing commitment to the environment provides students and academics interested in this field.
And for those of us not immersed in acadaemia, Rachel points out that any one of us can modify our behaviour by thinking about how much, where and how we travel, for example, how we use our gardens, and by reducing our own carbon footprint.
Mentioned in this podcast:
• Professor Rachel Warren's career biography
• Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia, UK
• The Montreal Protocol
• The Kyoto Protocol
Other episodes mentioned in this podcast
Nick Molden (Episode 4)
Laura Yeates and Leora Schlasko (Episode 3).
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