What if one university helped shape modern climate science? Discover how the University of Reading became synonymous with the field and why it remains at the centre of that story.
This World Meteorology Day 2026, we trace the evolution of climate science, from the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985 to today’s global challenges, and explore how Reading became a hub for the ideas, research and people driving the field forward.
In this episode, Professor Hannah Cloke OBE from the University of Reading’s Department of Meteorology speaks with Professor Keith Shine FRS, the UK’s Regius Professor of Climate Science, and Dr Jolene Cook OBE, climate science advisor to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the UK’s representative to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Together, they examine Reading’s role in climate science and reflect on the field’s growth and future. Their journeys, shaped in part by the university, offer insight into how the discipline has developed, how universities and government are preparing the next generation of climate scientists, and the opportunities ahead for early career researchers.
Find out more about the University of Reading, it’s relationship with IPCC and how it has carved out a position at the heart of climate change conversations.
CHAPTERS
00:00 – Discover Reading, a global centre for climate science
00:52 – Meet the voices, Keith Shine and Jolene Cook
02:10 – Pathways into climate science, where it all began
04:32 – 1985 and beyond, the ozone hole and growth of atmospheric science
07:25 – A defining role, the UK’s first Regius Professor of Climate Science
09:00 – Learning at Reading, shaping a generation of scientists
12:52 – From science to policy, the role of the IPCC
17:00 – Preparing the next generation, universities, government and early career opportunities
25:30 – Reading at 100, looking ahead to the next century of climate science
Image Credit: IPCC on LinkedIn
Transcript:
00:00:08 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Hello and welcome to our World Meteorological Day podcast.
00:00:12 Prof. Hannah Cloke
I’m Hannah Cloke, Professor of Hydrology here at the University of Reading, and it’s a real pleasure to be hosting today’s conversation in our centenary year.
00:00:22 Prof. Hannah Cloke
The University of Reading has a long history at the heart of global climate conversations, and today it’s home to one of the world’s largest clusters of climate scientists.
00:00:31 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Last month, we hosted the International Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, when more than 100 experts and policymakers from around the world came together to help shape the next international climate assessment.
00:00:43 Prof. Hannah Cloke
For decades, Reading scientists have played a central role in the work of the IPCC.
00:00:48 Prof. Hannah Cloke
and our expertise has helped shape many major assessments by the UN’s top climate body and has even contributed to a Nobel Prize win.
00:00:56 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Today I’m joined by two guests who represent Reading’s deep involvement in climate science and government policy.
00:01:02 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Professor Keith Shine, Fellow of the Royal Society, Regius Professor of Meteorology and Climate Science, contributed to the early UN ozone layer assessments and was involved in the very first IPCC report in 1990.
00:01:17 Prof. Hannah Cloke
And Dr.
00:01:18 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Jolene Cook, OBE, a Reading graduate who is now the UK’s IPCC focal point and Head of International Climate Science at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
00:01:29 Prof. Hannah Cloke
In our conversation today, we’re going to discover a bit more about their journeys at the university and why they think Reading has become such a force in climate research.
00:01:44 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Thank you both for joining me today on this Discover Reading podcast.
00:01:47 Prof. Hannah Cloke
I’m really looking forward to speaking to you and finding out more about your personal journeys.
00:01:51 Prof. Hannah Cloke
And I’m interested to learn why you think Reading has become so central to global climate discussions and what that means for the next generation of climate leaders.
00:02:00 Prof. Hannah Cloke
But firstly, hello.
00:02:03 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Thank you for joining me in the wonderful Mingella studios here on campus.
00:02:08 Prof. Hannah Cloke
It’s A glorious sunny day outside, not quite so sunny inside.
00:02:13 Prof. Hannah Cloke
So Keith, let’s start with you as someone at the heart of Reading’s world-leading meteorological community.
00:02:19 Prof. Hannah Cloke
What first led you into meteorology and what was the focus of your early research?
00:02:24 Prof. Keith Shine
Well, it’s one of the things I don’t actually know.
00:02:26 Prof. Keith Shine
I remember in my mid-teens, my dad asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said meteorologist and I don’t really know why I said it.
00:02:34 Prof. Keith Shine
And I think it was, I must have been doing meteorology and geography that day.
00:02:38 Prof. Keith Shine
And so
00:02:40 Prof. Keith Shine
I kept my options open.
00:02:42 Prof. Keith Shine
I went to talk to someone at our local, I grew up in Birmingham at our local university who said, don’t do geography, do lots of maths and physics.
00:02:51 Prof. Keith Shine
Maths wasn’t for me, so I did more physics.
00:02:56 Prof. Keith Shine
I did a physics degree and then the PhD I started working in meteorology.
00:03:01 Prof. Keith Shine
And from the word go, I was really focusing on what human activity could be doing to the climate system.
00:03:09 Prof. Keith Shine
So that was what my PhD is.
00:03:10 Prof. Keith Shine
And all these years on, I’m still focusing on that same issue.
00:03:15 Prof. Keith Shine
Of course, the priorities change.
00:03:17 Prof. Keith Shine
But that’s me, really.
00:03:20 Prof. Hannah Cloke
And Jolene, your climate journey began here.
00:03:22 Prof. Hannah Cloke
So what drew you to study atmospheric sciences at Reading in the 1st place?
00:03:25 Dr. Jolene Cook
Oh yeah, so it is.
00:03:27 Dr. Jolene Cook
It feels like a long time ago as well, but actually it wasn’t intentional, not in the slightest.
00:03:32 Dr. Jolene Cook
I was actually, after leaving university, I actually went into fund management and kind of off on a whim I applied for a job as a BBC weather forecaster.
00:03:43 Dr. Jolene Cook
Didn’t get it, because they said I needed meteorology experience.
00:03:47 Dr. Jolene Cook
So, for some reason, I then left to go and do a master’s up in Edinburgh for actually maths to continue my studies there.
00:03:57 Dr. Jolene Cook
And then I just saw a job at Reading.
00:03:58 Dr. Jolene Cook
I thought, okay, this is my chance to get me trilogy experience.
00:04:01 Dr. Jolene Cook
So then I came here and took on to a research position with Ellie Highwoods.
00:04:06 Dr. Jolene Cook
And then just kind of fell into it.
00:04:07 Dr. Jolene Cook
And then just moved into the climate space.
00:04:09 Dr. Jolene Cook
And then after my research position finished, I remember Ellie and Keith were saying, why don’t you stay on and do a PhD?
00:04:16 Dr. Jolene Cook
I’m not sure, I’m not sure.
00:04:17 Dr. Jolene Cook
Anyway, I did.
00:04:18 Dr. Jolene Cook
I did.
00:04:21 Dr. Jolene Cook
And that was the start of it really.
00:04:23 Dr. Jolene Cook
I just kind of stumbled into climate change.
00:04:25 Dr. Jolene Cook
I’m really glad I did.
00:04:27 Dr. Jolene Cook
I mean, yeah, it kind of matches how I feel about the environment and things, but it certainly wasn’t a planned pathway, but definitely become a career since.
00:04:35 Prof. Hannah Cloke
But you didn’t make it to weather forecasting.
00:04:37 Dr. Jolene Cook
No, I decided that probably wasn’t for me in the end.
00:04:41 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Well, it’s clear that we’ve got a lot of maths in the room today, as well as a lot of meteorology.
00:04:46 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Keith, you were involved in some of the first global discussions about ozone layer and climate change.
00:04:51 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Tell us about that.
00:04:52 Prof. Keith Shine
Yeah, well, they’re very different stories actually, because see, in the mid-1980s, we’re expecting the ozone layer to get depleted by chemicals we’re adding into the atmosphere, but expected it to be rather
00:05:09 Prof. Keith Shine
slow and gradual.
00:05:10 Prof. Keith Shine
And in 1985, the Antarctic ozone hole was discovered and it was like a big bang for atmospheric science.
00:05:17 Prof. Keith Shine
It was happening at a speed and extent that nobody thought possible.
00:05:23 Prof. Keith Shine
And so it was a, well, it was worrying time, but it was also exciting time.
00:05:27 Prof. Keith Shine
It happened to me at a point in my career when I really could dedicate lots of time to it.
00:05:32 Prof. Keith Shine
And
00:05:32 Prof. Keith Shine
the global community really came together and in a couple of years had firmly understood that the Antarctic ozone hole was being driven by gases that we were emitting, using in our fridges and in our aerosol cans.
00:05:47 Prof. Keith Shine
And it was also, although we’ve not totally solved the ozone layer issue, ozone depletion issue, it was politically a fairly easy one to solve.
00:05:57 Prof. Keith Shine
It was rather few gases we were putting into the atmosphere that
00:06:03 Prof. Keith Shine
that could be replaced by other substances and industry and policy makers were all on the same side.
00:06:09 Prof. Keith Shine
So that was, some people say it was the best thing the United Nations has ever done is to get a treaty together to ban these so-called chlorofluorocarbons going into the atmosphere.
00:06:21 Prof. Keith Shine
So
00:06:22 Prof. Keith Shine
That was the ozone hole, but climate change is rather different because I talked about us expecting the ozone layer to be gradually depleted.
00:06:30 Prof. Keith Shine
Climate change is also, until recent years, a rather slowly evolving problem.
00:06:35 Prof. Keith Shine
And when we wrote the first IPCC report back in 1990,
00:06:42 Prof. Keith Shine
The theory said the climate was going to change because of the gases we were emitting, but we hadn’t actually got strong evidence from the observations back then.
00:06:49 Prof. Keith Shine
It was only by the time, 10, 15 years later, that the really clear evidence emerged.
00:06:54 Prof. Keith Shine
So we were casting around in the dark a little bit.
00:06:59 Prof. Keith Shine
And the other thing, which is very different to today, is that
00:07:04 Prof. Keith Shine
Back in 1990, I could read practically every paper that was published, every research paper that was published in this area.
00:07:10 Prof. Keith Shine
Of course, the global community was so small, and now it’s enormous.
00:07:15 Prof. Keith Shine
And I couldn’t, I couldn’t read.
00:07:17 Prof. Hannah Cloke
You’re saying that you don’t read all of it?
00:07:18 Prof. Hannah Cloke
I’m very disappointed.
00:07:20 Prof. Keith Shine
I couldn’t read a week’s output in a year nowadays, but so it is a very different environment.
00:07:26 Prof. Keith Shine
And you know, there are the few groups doing global climate modelling on using computers.
00:07:32 Prof. Keith Shine
So it was a much smaller community.
00:07:34 Prof. Keith Shine
And so things have changed a lot since then.
00:07:37 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Today you’re the first holder of the Regis Professorship in Meteorology and Climate Science.
00:07:42 Prof. Hannah Cloke
That sounds very grand indeed.
00:07:44 Prof. Hannah Cloke
What does that mean?
00:07:45 Prof. Keith Shine
Well, it’s an award to the university, not to me personally.
00:07:48 Prof. Keith Shine
So as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee back in 2013, universities were invited to apply for a Regis Professorship.
00:08:00 Prof. Keith Shine
and I was part of the team that put the application together.
00:08:03 Prof. Keith Shine
So we were delighted when it was successful.
00:08:05 Prof. Keith Shine
And when it was advertised, I subsequently applied for it and got made the first Regis Professor.
00:08:11 Prof. Keith Shine
So that’s great.
00:08:12 Prof. Keith Shine
I mean, it’s an interesting thing.
00:08:13 Prof. Keith Shine
There are no royal duties or benefits that go with it.
00:08:16 Prof. Keith Shine
And it’s very much, as I said, an award to the university rather than to me personally, but it was still a great honour to be
00:08:26 Prof. Keith Shine
the very first.
00:08:26 Prof. Hannah Cloke
And it allows you a lot of freedom to do what you like.
00:08:31 Prof. Keith Shine
I wish.
00:08:33 Prof. Keith Shine
It still had all the same academic duties.
00:08:35 Prof. Keith Shine
While I enjoy teaching, I don’t enjoy marking so much, but I still have committee work and administration duties.
00:08:42 Prof. Hannah Cloke
And what’s your favourite class that you teach?
00:08:46 Prof. Keith Shine
One of my, well, I’ve taught climate change and also radiative transfer.
00:08:50 Prof. Keith Shine
That’s how the sun’s light passing through the atmosphere, so I’ve always enjoyed doing that.
00:08:54 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Lots of equations.
00:08:55 Prof. Keith Shine
Lots of equations.
00:08:57 Prof. Keith Shine
I mean, some of the courses are in scientific areas that aren’t changing much from year to year, so you can normally use the same lecture notes year on year.
00:09:04 Prof. Keith Shine
But climate change is changing every year, so you have to update almost everything every time you give the lecture course.
00:09:10 Prof. Keith Shine
So yeah, so there’s different challenges, but no, I always enjoyed it.
00:09:13 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Yeah, wonderful.
00:09:16 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Jolene, so Keith was one of your supervisors when you were studying for your PhD.
00:09:20 Prof. Hannah Cloke
So what was it like studying here then?
00:09:24 Dr. Jolene Cook
I mean, it was incredible, wasn’t it?
00:09:25 Dr. Jolene Cook
I mean, it’s one of those things you don’t appreciate necessarily until afterwards.
00:09:29 Dr. Jolene Cook
When I knew I was working in an amazing department, I think, as I said, I didn’t, when I applied for the first research position here, I didn’t really appreciate why I was coming to Reading or, you know, the important role that the university and especially the meteorology department played sort of globally, really.
00:09:48 Dr. Jolene Cook
So it’s funny, I was reflecting on this a few days ago.
00:09:52 Dr. Jolene Cook
It was more after I left Reading in a way that I really appreciated the role of all the scientists like Keith and Brian Hoskins and they play worldwide.
00:10:02 Dr. Jolene Cook
When you have this outside perspective and get involved in the IPCC and you can reflect on different communities around the world.
00:10:08 Dr. Jolene Cook
So
00:10:09 Dr. Jolene Cook
Certainly when I was in the department, things like everyone’s sitting in the coffee room, you see how passionate everyone is about their research, really important.
00:10:17 Dr. Jolene Cook
You see all the incredible stuff that was going on and being sort of immersed on it day-to-day was amazing.
00:10:25 Dr. Jolene Cook
It was kind of the first time for many, I guess, when I became aware of the IPCC.
00:10:32 Dr. Jolene Cook
I think there were three things in particular that really stuck out to me.
00:10:37 Dr. Jolene Cook
One of them was going to one of the lunchtime seminars.
00:10:40 Dr. Jolene Cook
I think Keith and Brian Hoskins and a couple of others were talking about their involvement in this government process, a government science process called the IPCC.
00:10:50 Dr. Jolene Cook
And they were explaining their roles in it and what they did.
00:10:56 Dr. Jolene Cook
They also explained this process at the end of the report, when you present this report to all the member governments.
00:11:04 Dr. Jolene Cook
and that spent a week in a room with all these governments going through the report sentence by sentence, improving it sentence by sentence.
00:11:11 Dr. Jolene Cook
And I very clearly remember and thinking, oh my goodness, who on earth would do a job like that?
00:11:15 Dr. Jolene Cook
Hello?
00:11:20 Dr. Jolene Cook
Sign me up.
00:11:21 Dr. Jolene Cook
Oh no, it was really stuck out, really important.
00:11:24 Dr. Jolene Cook
And seeing these incredible scientists contributing to this report having such an impact.
00:11:30 Dr. Jolene Cook
So that was the first thing.
00:11:32 Dr. Jolene Cook
And then the second thing I remember was desperately racing to finish my PhD before the AR4 came out.
00:11:38 Dr. Jolene Cook
That’s the 4th assessment report.
00:11:40 Dr. Jolene Cook
Yeah, the 4th assessment report, yes, exactly.
00:11:43 Dr. Jolene Cook
Because, you know, the IPCC for many researchers is, especially early researchers, is like almost like the go-to thing, almost like your Bible.
00:11:52 Dr. Jolene Cook
If you want to know about something, you go to the report to learn about it first.
00:11:55 Dr. Jolene Cook
And I was so keenly aware that as soon as the AR4 came out,
00:12:00 Dr. Jolene Cook
I would have to start referencing lots and lots of other things.
00:12:02 Dr. Jolene Cook
I’ve just written my literature review.
00:12:03 Dr. Jolene Cook
I didn’t have to want to want to start looking at other things.
00:12:06 Dr. Jolene Cook
I didn’t make it, but it was really, yeah, it was it was it was quite a rush at the end.
00:12:12 Dr. Jolene Cook
And then the third thing is the thrill you get from seeing your papers referenced and mentioned in the IPCC reports.
00:12:24 Dr. Jolene Cook
I had a couple.
00:12:25 Dr. Jolene Cook
I had one on aerosol semi-direct effects with Ellie Highwood that we’d written.
00:12:31 Dr. Jolene Cook
And later on, the papers with Keith on ways of comparing different greenhouse gases and their impact as well.
00:12:38 Dr. Jolene Cook
So, yeah, I think that’s when I started realising, oh, this is something.
00:12:43 Dr. Jolene Cook
And then when I left, I took up a role in the civil service.
00:12:48 Dr. Jolene Cook
working for the IPCC on the other side, if you like, for governments and really seeing what impact the science community, what impact Reading was having worldwide.
00:12:57 Dr. Jolene Cook
Yeah, that’s definitely when I got a better sense of the thing I’d been involved in really.
00:13:02 Dr. Jolene Cook
Yeah, really, really important.
00:13:04 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Yeah, great.
00:13:04 Prof. Hannah Cloke
And now you are the UK’s IPCC focal point, which is a bit of a weird title.
00:13:09 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Can you tell us a bit about what that means and what you do?
00:13:12 Dr. Jolene Cook
Yeah, absolutely.
00:13:13 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Check sentences, obviously.
00:13:15 Dr. Jolene Cook
Check sentences, yeah.
00:13:17 Dr. Jolene Cook
Yeah, so the IPCC, let’s just clarify what that is in the 1st place.
00:13:22 Dr. Jolene Cook
First place, it’s formed of member governments around the world, about 195-ish governments, and who work together to agree on what reports are going to be put together on climate change, or what the scope of those reports is.
00:13:39 Dr. Jolene Cook
They consider which experts are going to be involved, et cetera, and they work with the experts.
00:13:45 Dr. Jolene Cook
And each one of those countries has to have a representative on that panel, my focal point, who is responsible for representing their own member countries’ positions and priorities.
00:13:59 Dr. Jolene Cook
And that’s what I do.
00:13:59 Dr. Jolene Cook
So I represent the UK in that, in the panel, in the interval panel on climate change.
00:14:06 Dr. Jolene Cook
So what do I do?
00:14:08 Dr. Jolene Cook
I have to kind of coordinate the UK thoughts on reports and
00:14:13 Dr. Jolene Cook
what priorities they have for research needs and information they want.
00:14:20 Dr. Jolene Cook
I have to go to the panel and with my counterparts worldwide, talk about, okay, how do we bring this process together so it delivers reports that meets all the different priorities from different countries and everyone has different areas they’d like to focus on.
00:14:37 Dr. Jolene Cook
Obviously, also when the reports are in draft, I coordinate with my team.
00:14:42 Dr. Jolene Cook
I have to say I have a brilliant team supporting me.
00:14:45 Dr. Jolene Cook
We share the report across government.
00:14:48 Dr. Jolene Cook
So every department, everyone who has an interest in climate action and information, the IPCC reports gets a chance to review those reports.
00:14:56 Dr. Jolene Cook
And then we submit those reports to the IPCC for the authors, the expert to consider.
00:15:03 Dr. Jolene Cook
And we also help guide the process itself, making sure that the IPCC is very efficient in the way it does its work.
00:15:10 Dr. Jolene Cook
But the other thing I do as focal point is obviously we all have huge roles in actually communicating those findings.
00:15:16 Dr. Jolene Cook
Once the reports are approved, we’ve been through that sentence by sentence process, we’ve got the final report that every government signs up, making sure we share those findings with our government, for example, governments around the world.
00:15:28 Dr. Jolene Cook
That the results are very clearly communicated to all the users and stakeholders around, and that, that’s the critical part, really.
00:15:34 Dr. Jolene Cook
In the end, it’s like making sure that uptake of those reports is maximised, really, and part of…
00:15:42 Dr. Jolene Cook
For me, for my part of role as Head of International Climate Science, it’s also making sure that the IPCC and its findings are informing the UN political discussions, so the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, so that’s where all the action is agreed worldwide, so making sure that those discussions are fully based on the science as provided by the IPCC.
00:16:02 Prof. Keith Shine
I think it’s so important that someone in a civil service position has such a strong grounding in climate science, and I know from my many contacts around the world how
00:16:12 Prof. Keith Shine
respected Jolene is and I’m often told she’s a voice of common sense because she sees it from both sides, from both the political side and the firm climate science side.
00:16:24 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Yeah, it sounds like a very complicated job with lots of different parts to it as well.
00:16:29 Dr. Jolene Cook
Yeah, it’s incredibly interesting.
00:16:31 Dr. Jolene Cook
So I mean, as Keith says, our role is like the bridge between the science and the policy makers, if you like.
00:16:37 Dr. Jolene Cook
So you get a real well-rounded perspective of all the different challenges.
00:16:42 Dr. Jolene Cook
Evidence, for example, is not just purely the climate science.
00:16:45 Dr. Jolene Cook
Evidence is a lot more things.
00:16:47 Dr. Jolene Cook
It’s public perception, it’s like the wider economic situation, it’s lots of different things.
00:16:52 Dr. Jolene Cook
And understanding how policy makers bring all that stuff together helps you then give guidance to experts on how best to think about their work and the kind of questions that are being asked that they can really help answer.
00:17:06 Prof. Hannah Cloke
The climate crisis is now widely acknowledged as one of the most pressing challenges of our time.
00:17:11 Prof. Hannah Cloke
So one of the big questions is how can universities and government play an active role in preparing the next generation of climate science leaders?
00:17:18 Prof. Hannah Cloke
So I’m going to start with you, Keith, on this one.
00:17:21 Prof. Hannah Cloke
How do you think universities should do this?
00:17:23 Prof. Keith Shine
By training, training the next generation, almost full stop.
00:17:27 Prof. Keith Shine
But I think it goes a bit further than that.
00:17:29 Prof. Keith Shine
I think one of the things, for example, I stress to my new incoming PhD students is that by the time they’re in their third and 4th year of their PhD student, they’ll be
00:17:40 Prof. Keith Shine
one of the global authorities in their area of science comes in bewildering.
00:17:45 Prof. Keith Shine
There’s this big topic, but they’re focused on one area.
00:17:49 Prof. Keith Shine
And they’ll quickly find themselves, you know, almost a go-to person in these areas.
00:17:54 Prof. Keith Shine
So just encouraging people to realise that they can play a role in climate science.
00:17:59 Prof. Keith Shine
They might feel like, well, I’m a new little PhD student, but actually it’s not long before they’re contributing.
00:18:04 Prof. Keith Shine
Well, Jolene talked about the paper she was writing as part of her PhD, is that you
00:18:09 Prof. Keith Shine
you quickly find that you find a niche and you get respected by a much wider community.
00:18:17 Prof. Keith Shine
So I think it’s encouraging students to realise that, two or three years of study in a focused area, that they can become someone really quite established and known in that community.
00:18:30 Prof. Hannah Cloke
You must have supervised quite a few PhD students.
00:18:33 Prof. Keith Shine
Yeah, I’ve been blessed with some brilliant ones.
00:18:35 Prof. Keith Shine
Although Jolene wasn’t one of my PhD students, but she worked very closely with me on a couple of other projects.
00:18:40 Prof. Keith Shine
And now it’s a delight to have someone like Jolene.
00:18:43 Prof. Keith Shine
I mean, she was mentioning some of the research that we did in the early 2000s, which we didn’t really realise at the time, was ahead of its time and most of the modelling groups are only just actually catching up now.
00:18:57 Prof. Keith Shine
So it was a concept of the way
00:19:00 Prof. Keith Shine
the way we characterize, for example, CO2’s effect on climate.
00:19:04 Prof. Keith Shine
And I remember well that Jillian came to our weekly meeting and she unveiled the results by pulling post-it notes off a piece of paper to show that we’d come up with a better method of doing that.
00:19:16 Prof. Keith Shine
And 5, 10 years later, the IPCC adopted it under a slightly different name as the accepted concept of characterizing the effect of CO2 on other gases we emit into the atmosphere on climate.
00:19:29 Prof. Keith Shine
So
00:19:30 Prof. Keith Shine
It was just an example how early career researchers and PhD students can make an impact.
00:19:36 Prof. Keith Shine
But it’s giving them belief really and also giving them room to present their own ideas.
00:19:43 Prof. Hannah Cloke
And what are your tricks for giving them belief?
00:19:46 Prof. Keith Shine
Gosh, I wish I knew.
00:19:47 Prof. Hannah Cloke
She’s being fabulous.
00:19:52 Prof. Keith Shine
Just being encouraging, I think.
00:19:55 Prof. Keith Shine
just encouraging them to have the bravery to think about their project and how to present it.
00:20:03 Prof. Keith Shine
And as I say, just to realise that they can make a contribution, however small they might feel as a PhD student you can, or a young early career researcher, that you can have that impact.
00:20:14 Prof. Hannah Cloke
And do you think things have changed since Jillian was already?
00:20:18 Prof. Keith Shine
I think they’ve changed massively in many ways.
00:20:20 Prof. Keith Shine
As I said before, just the sheer number of people working in climate science has gone up.
00:20:26 Prof. Keith Shine
So I think it’s a little bit harder for the present generation because of that.
00:20:30 Prof. Keith Shine
And just, the observational systems and the computer models are producing amounts of data that were kind of unthinkable when Jolene started out.
00:20:41 Prof. Keith Shine
And again, that’s a huge challenge, knowing how to cope with those large amounts of
00:20:46 Prof. Keith Shine
data and whittling it down into making robust conclusions.
00:20:51 Prof. Keith Shine
So I think that’s become one of the big challenges.
00:20:55 Prof. Keith Shine
I mean, it’s of course an opportunity.
00:20:57 Prof. Keith Shine
We’ve got all this data, but actually distilling it and digesting it is one of the big challenges we have now.
00:21:07 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Angelina, what do you think the opportunities are for people who want to work with government, so scientists or those who want a career, how would they get started?
00:21:15 Dr. Jolene Cook
Yeah, absolutely.
00:21:16 Dr. Jolene Cook
I mean, there’s a few different ways.
00:21:18 Dr. Jolene Cook
I mean, if I firstly think about, if I could just acknowledge some things that Keith was saying about his role in encouraging me, it was hugely important.
00:21:26 Dr. Jolene Cook
And I think professors like Keith have a, as you say, huge
00:21:33 Dr. Jolene Cook
a really vital role in making sure, bringing the younger generation up and giving them support, showing that there are all these opportunities to feed into processes, helping them understand, helping them build connections and networks and helping them place their area of research, if you like, in the bigger picture, which I think is quite a lot of it when you start dealing with climate change and climate action.
00:21:57 Dr. Jolene Cook
I mean, within our work, as I said, in our team, we were a lot about being the bridge builder, if you like, between the research community and policy makers within government.
00:22:07 Dr. Jolene Cook
And we try and meet as many in the research community as we possibly can.
00:22:13 Dr. Jolene Cook
Within my work, I make sure that we put a lot of emphasis on speaking to the research community and the IPCC, providing lots of support to the UK’s IPCC community.
00:22:25 Dr. Jolene Cook
The role of, I would say, early career scientists is hugely important.
00:22:31 Dr. Jolene Cook
It’s something within the IPCC is very strongly supported.
00:22:36 Dr. Jolene Cook
We’re doing quite a lot of work there on bringing some of these new researchers who have different perspectives, come from different generations, have different ways of working, and sometimes from some of the more well-established professors within the process.
00:22:50 Dr. Jolene Cook
And that’s hugely important.
00:22:51 Dr. Jolene Cook
Lots and lots of support for that.
00:22:54 Dr. Jolene Cook
For example, I think when the IPCC workshops were here a few weeks ago, I was involved in an event for early career researchers, which is hugely important.
00:23:05 Dr. Jolene Cook
These are people who don’t necessarily know the ins and outs of how the IPCC works necessarily.
00:23:12 Dr. Jolene Cook
So to have the focal point and the secretary from the IPCC speaking about what it involves.
00:23:18 Dr. Jolene Cook
how they can get involved as both as authors, contributing as authors to the process, or looking at the research they produce and the papers they produce and how you can use those, or even working as a chapter scientist supporting authors.
00:23:34 Dr. Jolene Cook
These are really important roles.
00:23:37 Dr. Jolene Cook
And the other thing is about actually getting involved in the expert reviews of the reports as well.
00:23:42 Dr. Jolene Cook
I mean, it’s a great chance to see the draft reports
00:23:45 Dr. Jolene Cook
understanding how things are being framed and put together and synthesized.
00:23:51 Dr. Jolene Cook
And it’s a, the IPCC assessment is very different.
00:23:55 Dr. Jolene Cook
It’s really not just a literature review.
00:23:57 Dr. Jolene Cook
There’s a, it’s quite a different process.
00:23:59 Dr. Jolene Cook
And I think unless you’re involved in it and seeing it and experiencing, I imagine for many of these early career scientists, it’s quite difficult to understand.
00:24:10 Dr. Jolene Cook
So, as I said, within our role, there’s my team and which we sit within a bigger team of climate science advisors.
00:24:19 Dr. Jolene Cook
We reach out, we speak to lots of the research community around the country and for me, worldwide as well.
00:24:26 Dr. Jolene Cook
We help, provide a bit of guidance on to researchers on what are the latest policy priorities in terms of the questions that they’re asking.
00:24:34 Dr. Jolene Cook
So, you know, definitely if you’re an early career stage researcher,
00:24:39 Dr. Jolene Cook
try and get in touch with us or colleagues and talk to us, make connections, we’ve all lovely people, we’re we like, helps us, build our build our knowledge too.
00:24:51 Dr. Jolene Cook
And yeah, and the other thing is look at those opportunities that the IPCC presents.
00:24:59 Dr. Jolene Cook
So, you know, my team will advertise when one of these IPCC opportunities comes out, you know, try and take them if you can.
00:25:08 Dr. Jolene Cook
And even if you’re not successful, you can, it’s a way of registering your interest, it’s a way of getting yourself known to this community.
00:25:15 Dr. Jolene Cook
And by doing that, by getting involved with the IPCC, you’re exposed so much more to how this research is used to actually push climate action, which is, yeah, which is hugely important.
00:25:29 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Okay, so to finish off a tough one, okay, Reading University is currently celebrating its 100th anniversary.
00:25:36 Prof. Hannah Cloke
So where do you see the biggest challenges and opportunities for climate action over the next century?
00:25:41 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Shall we start with you, Jolene?
00:25:44 Dr. Jolene Cook
Yeah, sure.
00:25:46 Dr. Jolene Cook
Well, many, many challenges, aren’t there?
00:25:48 Dr. Jolene Cook
So there’s still a fundamental point about helping people understand why climate action is needed among all the other priorities and challenges that people are facing today.
00:26:00 Dr. Jolene Cook
How do you make the case that, you know, you should be thinking about moving to renewables, thinking about
00:26:06 Dr. Jolene Cook
where you’re getting your energy from, thinking about how you do your day-to-day life, when you’re worrying about how you’re going to feed your kids, for example, how you’re going to get them to school, how you’re going to look after your health, how you’re going to find a job, really, really, really challenging.
00:26:22 Dr. Jolene Cook
So there’s something about helping people understand that these actions that you’re, that are necessary to tackle climate change,
00:26:33 Dr. Jolene Cook
offer you benefits as well for your life.
00:26:35 Dr. Jolene Cook
They offer you the chance to have a healthier life in the future, greener space, better air quality.
00:26:42 Dr. Jolene Cook
They can offer you different and newer and better jobs.
00:26:47 Dr. Jolene Cook
But that’s a real challenge.
00:26:48 Dr. Jolene Cook
And the communication around this is really difficult.
00:26:50 Dr. Jolene Cook
You know, those who were kind of pushing back against net zero are quite willing to come up with, you know, your fake facts, quite willing to attack the fundamentals of climate science.
00:27:04 Dr. Jolene Cook
So there’s something about helping, I would say, the general public and think about the way we communicate things in a way that really resonates with people in their everyday life.
00:27:16 Dr. Jolene Cook
And there’s also the point about bringing all the different sciences together as well.
00:27:21 Dr. Jolene Cook
It’s no longer just about physical climate science, so the climate models, et cetera, and just saying, this is happening, this is happening, you know, it’s getting warmer, et cetera.
00:27:30 Dr. Jolene Cook
It’s more about how do you bring those together with people who are designing cities, et cetera, or designing infrastructure?
00:27:38 Dr. Jolene Cook
How do you bring in the other expertise?
00:27:40 Dr. Jolene Cook
How do you bring engineering together with the physical climate science?
00:27:43 Dr. Jolene Cook
How do you bring it together with social scientists?
00:27:46 Dr. Jolene Cook
So there’s a real need to be much more interdisciplinary in the way we approach problems to understand pathways to climate action.
00:27:54 Dr. Jolene Cook
So huge things.
00:27:56 Dr. Jolene Cook
And then I guess if you put it in world context as well, every country has its own priorities.
00:28:03 Dr. Jolene Cook
And a lot of things are especially around adaptation are very context specific.
00:28:10 Dr. Jolene Cook
So there’s something about trying to understand all these, getting to know the audience, getting to know their particular circumstances to provide the kind of relevant information.
00:28:20 Dr. Jolene Cook
And I say that’s where the IPCC obviously comes into this, is it has all these voices feeding in, has all these different policy exposure to different policy priorities from government representatives.
00:28:30 Dr. Jolene Cook
So hugely important.
00:28:32 Dr. Jolene Cook
But that’s not to say that very, you know, when you’re looking at adaptation, for example, you still need those local voices feeding in.
00:28:39 Dr. Jolene Cook
And I think there’s a lot more work being done now, especially in the IPCC to bring those voices on board.
00:28:48 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Thank you.
00:28:50 Prof. Hannah Cloke
So Keith, what about you?
00:28:51 Prof. Hannah Cloke
What opportunities give you the most hope?
00:28:56 Prof. Keith Shine
I think the most hope is that we’re understanding what parts of our understanding is robust.
00:29:04 Prof. Keith Shine
So we know if we emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it causes climate change.
00:29:09 Prof. Keith Shine
And you know, the evidence is unequivocal.
00:29:13 Prof. Keith Shine
But
00:29:13 Prof. Keith Shine
Beyond that, there’s still a lot of puzzles to keep us going from a science point of view.
00:29:19 Prof. Keith Shine
And one example of a gas I’ve worked with a lot over the years is methane, which is being emitted by both industry and agriculture.
00:29:27 Prof. Keith Shine
There’s lots of puzzles how it’s changed over the past 20 years.
00:29:31 Prof. Keith Shine
And they’re something that young researchers, that’s just one example of a puzzle that young researchers can get involved in, is trying to untangle it.
00:29:39 Prof. Keith Shine
And it is that
00:29:41 Prof. Keith Shine
this interdisciplinary thing.
00:29:43 Prof. Keith Shine
It’s the kind of area that involves agriculture, it involves industry, it involves atmospheric chemistry, atmospheric physics.
00:29:49 Prof. Keith Shine
So it covers a broad range of subjects.
00:29:51 Prof. Keith Shine
And I think it’s an exciting area that we can go.
00:29:56 Prof. Keith Shine
And of course, the other thing is that we’ve got more sophisticated models, we’ve got more observations.
00:30:01 Prof. Keith Shine
And so we can begin to fit pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together in a way that we weren’t able to 10, 20 years ago.
00:30:10 Prof. Keith Shine
So I think
00:30:11 Prof. Keith Shine
The jigsaw puzzle is getting bigger.
00:30:12 Prof. Keith Shine
The number of pieces in the jigsaw puzzle is getting bigger.
00:30:16 Prof. Keith Shine
But it’s exciting to be part of putting all that together.
00:30:19 Prof. Keith Shine
And that’s why, you know, I hope it will continue to inspire young scientists to get involved in this area and contribute to it.
00:30:31 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Thank you so much, both of you, for talking to me today.
00:30:34 Prof. Hannah Cloke
It’s been really interesting.
00:30:36 Prof. Hannah Cloke
I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk about your weather forecasting.
00:30:40 Prof. Hannah Cloke
And I’m still very disappointed that you didn’t choose geography.
00:30:44 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Back in the back in the day as a geographer myself.
00:30:48 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Half half geographer, half meteorologist.
00:30:51 Prof. Hannah Cloke
Yeah, it’s been really interesting talking to you both and I’ve learned a lot about the IPCC process and I will let you back out into the sunshine.
00:31:00 Prof. Keith Shine
Thank you.
00:31:01 Prof. Keith Shine
Thank you.
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