Tamsin Edwards

Last updated

Tamsin Edwards
Born
Tamsin L. Edwards
EducationSt Margaret's School, Exeter
Alma mater University of Manchester (BSc, PhD)
Known forClimate science
Science communication
Scientific career
Institutions University of Bristol
Open University
King's College London
Thesis Diffractively produced Z bosons in the muon decay channel in pp collisions at √s=1.96 TeV, and the measurement of the efficiency of the DØ Run II Luminosity Monitor  (2006)
Doctoral advisor Brian Cox [1]
Website www.kcl.ac.uk/people/tamsin-edwards

Tamsin Edwards is a British climate scientist and Professor at King's College London. [2] [3] She is a popular science communicator and writes for the Public Library of Science (PLOS). [4]

Contents

Early life and education

Edwards became interested in physics after reading A Brief History of Time . [5] The daughter of Michael Edwards, [6] she completed A-Levels in Physics, Chemistry and Maths at St Margaret's School, in Exeter. [7] She studied physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. She completed a PhD in Particle Physics at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Brian Cox. [1] Her thesis investigated the production of Z bosons, detected by their subsequent decay to muons, using data collected at the Tevatron. [1]

Research and career

Edwards joined the Open University as a lecturer, working in the Palaeoenvironmental Change team. [8] [9] She uses computer models to predict and study climate change, [10] [11] with a particular interest in the impact on sea level rise of changes in the Antarctic ice sheet. [12] She studied how a glacier's grounding line (the point at which is separates from a continent's bedrock and floats into the sea) affects the rate of flow of glaciers, and estimated the effects of positive feedback. [13] [14] In 2017 Edwards joined King's College London as a lecturer in geography. [15] She will be a lead author for Chapter 9 (Ocean, cryosphere, and sea level change) of the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [16]

Edwards writes a popular science blog hosted by the Public Library of Science (PLOS). [4] She has written for The Guardian and contributed chapters to books about climate change. [17] [18] [19] Working with the Met Office, Edwards created educational resources about sea level rise for the 2017 United Nations Climate Change Conference ("COP23"). [20]

In 2014 she gave a TEDx talk at CERN, How to Love Uncertainty in Climate Science. [21] After fights between climate scientists and sceptics on Twitter in 2014, Edwards was part of a dinner party discussing how they could calm the debate. [22] The dinner included David Rose and Richard A. Betts, and Edwards was the only woman. [22] In 2015 she was celebrated as one of twenty women "making waves" at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference. [23] She won the 2016 British Science Association Charles Lyell Award for Environmental Sciences. [13] [24] She discussed how computer models can be used to predict ice sheet collapse and how to communicate uncertainty. [24] In 2017 she was profiled in the HuffPost Australia's Breaking The Ice series. [25] She is a speaker at the 2018 Bluedot Festival. [26] [27] [28]

Edwards has acted as a scientific consultant for the BBC. She was a consultant on the BBC's Climate Change by Numbers, which won an American Association for the Advancement of Science award for Science Journalism, [29] and a 2015 award for "Best Presentation of Science in an Environment Issue" from EuroPAWS. [30] She has appeared on BBC Radio 4 [31] [32] and BBC World Service. [33]

She was awarded the 2020 Climate Science Communications Award by the Royal Meteorological Society. [34]

On 28 January 2021, Edwards took part in a panel event of international experts called Climate Change: Why should we care?, organised by the Science Museum Group. [35]

In July 2023, at the Bluedot Festival, Edwards announced she has become a Professor at King’s College. [ better source needed ]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Climate of Antarctica</span> Overview of climactic conditions in Antarctica

The climate of Antarctica is the coldest on Earth. The continent is also extremely dry, averaging 166 mm (6.5 in) of precipitation per year. Snow rarely melts on most parts of the continent, and, after being compressed, becomes the glacier ice that makes up the ice sheet. Weather fronts rarely penetrate far into the continent, because of the katabatic winds. Most of Antarctica has an ice-cap climate with extremely cold and dry weather.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ice sheet</span> Large mass of glacial ice

In glaciology, an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, is a mass of glacial ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 km2 (19,000 sq mi). The only current ice sheets are in Antarctica and Greenland; during the Last Glacial Period at Last Glacial Maximum, the Laurentide Ice Sheet covered much of North America, the Weichselian ice sheet covered Northern Europe and the Patagonian Ice Sheet covered southern South America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amundsen Sea</span> Arm of the Southern Ocean

The Amundsen Sea is an arm of the Southern Ocean off Marie Byrd Land in western Antarctica. It lies between Cape Flying Fish to the east and Cape Dart on Siple Island to the west. Cape Flying Fish marks the boundary between the Amundsen Sea and the Bellingshausen Sea. West of Cape Dart there is no named marginal sea of the Southern Ocean between the Amundsen and Ross Seas. The Norwegian expedition of 1928–1929 under Captain Nils Larsen named the body of water for the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen while exploring this area in February 1929.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">West Antarctic Ice Sheet</span> Segment of the continental ice sheet that covers West (or Lesser) Antarctica

The Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is the segment of the continental ice sheet that covers West Antarctica, the portion of Antarctica on the side of the Transantarctic Mountains that lies in the Western Hemisphere. The WAIS is classified as a marine-based ice sheet, meaning that its bed lies well below sea level and its edges flow into floating ice shelves. The WAIS is bounded by the Ross Ice Shelf, the Ronne Ice Shelf, and outlet glaciers that drain into the Amundsen Sea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antarctic ice sheet</span> Earths southern polar ice cap

The Antarctic ice sheet is one of the two polar ice caps of Earth. It covers about 98% of the Antarctic continent and is the largest single mass of ice on Earth, with an average thickness of over 2 kilometers. Separate to the Antarctic sea ice it covers an area of almost 14 million square kilometres and contains 26.5 million cubic kilometres of ice. A cubic kilometer of ice weighs approximately 0.92 metric gigatonnes, meaning that the ice sheet weighs about 24,380,000 gigatonnes. It holds approximately 61% of all fresh water on Earth, equivalent to about 58 meters of sea level rise if all the ice were above sea level. In East Antarctica, the ice sheet rests on a major land mass, while in West Antarctica the bed can extend to more than 2,500 m below sea level.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pine Island Glacier</span> Large ice stream, fastest melting glacier in Antarctica

Pine Island Glacier (PIG) is a large ice stream, and the fastest melting glacier in Antarctica, responsible for about 25% of Antarctica's ice loss. The glacier ice streams flow west-northwest along the south side of the Hudson Mountains into Pine Island Bay, Amundsen Sea, Antarctica. It was mapped by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) from surveys and United States Navy (USN) air photos, 1960–66, and named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (US-ACAN) in association with Pine Island Bay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thwaites Glacier</span> Antarctic glacier

Thwaites Glacier is an unusually broad and vast Antarctic glacier located east of Mount Murphy, on the Walgreen Coast of Marie Byrd Land. It was initially sighted by polar researchers in 1940, mapped in 1959–1966 and officially named in 1967, after the late American glaciologist Fredrik T. Thwaites. The glacier flows into Pine Island Bay, part of the Amundsen Sea, at surface speeds which exceed 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) per year near its grounding line. Its fastest-flowing grounded ice is centered between 50 and 100 kilometres east of Mount Murphy. Like many other parts of the cryosphere, it has been adversely affected by climate change, and provides one of the more notable examples of the retreat of glaciers since 1850.

Michael Oppenheimer is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, the Department of Geosciences, and the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University. He is the director of the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment (C-PREE) at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and Faculty Associate of the Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences Program and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.

William Richard Peltier, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), is university professor of physics at the University of Toronto. He is director of the Centre for Global Change Science, past principal investigator of the Polar Climate Stability Network, and the scientific director of Canada's largest supercomputer centre, SciNet. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, of the American Geophysical Union, of the American Meteorological Society, and of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters..

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim Naish</span> New Zealand scientist (born 1951)

Timothy Raymond Naish is a New Zealand glaciologist and climate scientist who has been a researcher and lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington and the Director of the Antarctic Research Centre, and in 2020 became a programme leader at the Antarctic Science Platform. Naish has researched and written about the possible effect of melting ice sheets in Antarctica on global sea levels due to high CO2 emissions causing warming in the Southern Ocean. He was instrumental in establishing and leading the Antarctica Drilling Project (ANDRILL), and a Lead Author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report (2014).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criticism of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report</span>

The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) is a report on climate change created with the help of a large number of contributors, both scientists and governmental representatives. There has been considerable political controversy over a small number of errors found in the report, and there have been calls for review of the process used to formulate the report. The overwhelming majority view of scientists with expertise in climate change is that errors, when found, are corrected, and the issues as identified do not undermine the conclusions of the report that the climate system is warming in response to increased levels of greenhouse gases, largely due to human activities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sea level rise</span> Rise in sea levels due to climate change

Between 1901 and 2018, the average global sea level rose by 15–25 cm (6–10 in), or an average of 1–2 mm per year. This rate accelerated to 4.62 mm/yr for the decade 2013–2022. Climate change due to human activities is the main cause. Between 1993 and 2018, thermal expansion of water accounted for 42% of sea level rise. Melting temperate glaciers accounted for 21%, with Greenland accounting for 15% and Antarctica 8%. Sea level rise lags changes in the Earth's temperature. So sea level rise will continue to accelerate between now and 2050 in response to warming that is already happening. What happens after that will depend on what happens with human greenhouse gas emissions. Sea level rise may slow down between 2050 and 2100 if there are deep cuts in emissions. It could then reach a little over 30 cm (1 ft) from now by 2100. With high emissions it may accelerate. It could rise by 1 m or even 2 m by then. In the long run, sea level rise would amount to 2–3 m (7–10 ft) over the next 2000 years if warming amounts to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F). It would be 19–22 metres (62–72 ft) if warming peaks at 5 °C (9.0 °F).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eric Rignot</span> American scientist

Eric J. Rignot is the Donald Bren, Distinguished and Chancellor Professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, and a Senior Research Scientist for the Radar Science and Engineering Section at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He studies the interaction of the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica with global climate using a combination of satellite remote sensing, airborne remote sensing, understanding of physical processes controlling glacier flow and ice melt in the ocean, field methods, and climate modeling. He was elected at the National_Academy_of_Sciences in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Climate change in Antarctica</span> Impacts of climate change on Antarctica

Temperature change due to climate change in Antarctica is not stable over the whole continent. West Antarctica is warming rapidly, while the inland regions are cooled by the winds in Antarctica. Water in the West Antarctic has warmed by 1 °C since year 1955. Further increase in temperature in water and on land will affect the climate, ice mass and life on the continent and have global implications. Present-day greenhouse gas concentrations are higher than ever according to ice cores from Antarctica, which indicates that warming on this continent is not part of a natural cycle and attributable to anthropogenic climate change.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine Ritz</span> French Antarctic researcher

Catherine Ritz is a French Antarctic researcher, best known for her work on ice sheets and their impact on sea level rise.

Sophie Marie Jeanne Nowicki, is Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Geology of the University at Buffalo. She does research on the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, focusing on their connections to global climate and sea level. Before that, she was physical scientist at the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Centre, investigating ice sheet changes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Levy (paleoclimatologist)</span> New Zealand climate scientist

Richard Levy is a New Zealand glacial stratigrapher and paleoclimatologist with expertise in microfossil analysis. As a principal scientist at GNS Science he has been involved in international and New Zealand environmental research programmes focussing on the evolution of the Earth's climate and building an understanding of the role of greenhouse gases in causing anthropogenic climate changes, in particular those impacting global sea levels. He has had extensive experience in scientific drilling, leading major projects, including the ANtarctic geological DRILLing (ANDRILL) Program in Antarctica. Since 2018, Levy has co-led the government funded NZ SeaRise programme.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rob McKay</span> New Zealand scientist

Robert Murray McKay is a paleoceanographer who specialises in sedimentology, stratigraphy and palaeoclimatology, specifically gathering geological evidence to study how marine-based portions of the Antarctic ice sheet behave in response to abrupt climate and oceanic change. He has been involved in examination of marine sedimentary records and glacial deposits to show melting and cooling in Antarctica over the past 65 million years and how this has influenced global sea levels and climate. This has helped climate change scientists overcome uncertainty about how the ice sheets will respond to global warming and how this can be managed effectively in the 21st century. He has participated in international projects including ANDRILL and the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP), led major New Zealand government-funded research teams and has received several awards in recognition of his work. Since 2023 McKay has been a full professor at Victoria University of Wellington and from 2019, director of the Antarctic Research Centre.

Ricarda Winkelmann is a German mathematician, physicist, and climatologist. She is a professor of Climate System Analysis at Potsdam University and the Potsdam-Institute for Climate Impact Research. She studies interdependencies between climate, land ice, and the ocean.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Edwards, Tamsin L. (2006). Diffractively produced Z bosons in the muon decay channel in pp collisions at √s=1.96 TeV, and the measurement of the efficiency of the DØ Run II Luminosity Monitor (PhD thesis). University of Manchester. doi:10.2172/892267. OCLC   930686728. Copac   36713207.
  2. ↑ "King's College London - Edwards, Dr Tamsin". Kcl.ac.uk. Retrieved 23 May 2018.
  3. ↑ Tamsin Edwards publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  4. 1 2 "All Models Are Wrong". All Models Are Wrong. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  5. ↑ "The Real Deal: Tamsin Edwards, Climate Modeller". highheelsinthelab.blogspot.co.uk. 17 January 2011. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  6. ↑ "The Poetry & Science of Ice and Fire". Champernowne Trust. 3 August 2016. Retrieved 22 August 2018.
  7. ↑ "About me" . Retrieved 14 February 2023.
  8. ↑ "Team". Palaeoenvironmental Change. 8 March 2014. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  9. ↑ The Open University STEM (7 April 2017), Past, Present and Future Climates - Dr Tamsin Edwards , retrieved 15 May 2018
  10. ↑ "Tamsin Edwards - Stories of Change - OpenLearn - Open University". Open.edu. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  11. ↑ Edwards, T. L.; Challenor, P. G. (2013). "Risk and uncertainty in hydrometeorological hazards". In Rougier, Jonathan; Sparks, Steve; Hill, Lisa J. (eds.). Risk and Uncertainty Assessment for Natural Hazards. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-1107006195 . Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  12. ↑ Edwards, Tamsin (18 November 2015). "Antarctic ice sheet collapse will cause sea levels to rise. So what's new?". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  13. 1 2 "Place your bets: the collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet". British Science Association. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  14. ↑ "Dr Tamsin Edwards:Reconciling projections of the Antarctic contribution to sea level rise". Imperial College London. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  15. ↑ "King's College London - Edwards, Dr Tamsin". Kcl.ac.uk. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  16. ↑ "Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6-WG1)". Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change . Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  17. ↑ "CaSE | One climate data point". Sciencecampaign.org.uk. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  18. ↑ Edwards, T. L.; Challenor, P. G. (2013). "Hydrometeorological hazards under future climate change". In Rougier, Jonathan; Sparks, Steve; Hill, Lisa J. (eds.). Risk and Uncertainty Assessment for Natural Hazards. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-1107006195 . Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  19. ↑ "Tamsin Edwards". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  20. ↑ "COP 23". Met Office. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  21. ↑ Edwards, Tamsin. "Ripples of Curiosity". tedxcern.web.cern.ch. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  22. 1 2 "Climate consensus: scientists and sceptics suspend hostilities". Climate Home News. 3 October 2014. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  23. ↑ "Tamsin Edwards - Scientist making a name for herself as a fearless communicator | 1 Million Women" . Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  24. 1 2 "Award Lecture winners announced as BSF2016 programme goes online". British Science Association. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  25. ↑ Sharwood, Anthony (20 June 2017). "Here's What Happened When A Climate Scientist Went To A Pub To Argue With Deniers". Huffington Post. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  26. ↑ "Tamsin Edwards – Bluedot Festival". Bluedot Festival. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  27. ↑ "Bluedot announces stellar line-up for 2018". Science Focus. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  28. ↑ "Celebrating Earth Day - Jodrell Bank". Jodrell Bank. 22 April 2017. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  29. ↑ "The 2015 Winners Named in Expanded AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards Competition". American Association for the Advancement of Science. 10 November 2015. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  30. ↑ "The 2015 Science TV and New Media Award Winners". EuroPAWS. 25 November 2015. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  31. ↑ "Climate Change, State of the World's Plants, Antibiotic Resistance, Telephone Metadata, Bat Detective, BBC Inside Science - BBC Radio 4". BBC. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  32. ↑ "The Life Scientific: Tamsin Edwards on models of climate change". BBC. Retrieved 19 May 2021.
  33. ↑ "Health Advice for Gay Men When Homosexuality is Illegal, The Science Hour - BBC World Service". BBC. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  34. ↑ "Pioneering urban meteorologist is the first female recipient of the Symons Gold Medal". Royal Meteorological Society. 7 June 2021. Retrieved 7 June 2021. Awarded as an outstanding climate scientist who has been a leading and highly respected communicator of climate science for over a decade. She has set the standard internationally for pro-active, open and objective communication with the public on climate change and its scientific basis and has built a huge reputation for clarity and as a trusted voice of authority.
  35. ↑ "Climate Change: Why Should We Care?". Science Museum Group . Retrieved 16 June 2021.
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