Joanna Haigh
The Life Scientific
BBC
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 27 August 2013
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Joanna Haigh, Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College, London, studies the influence of the sun on the earth's climate using data collected by satellites. She talks to Jim al-Khalili about how she got started on her career in climate physics: she can trace her interest in it back to her childhood when she built herself a home weather station.
Jo Haigh explains why we need to know how the sun affects the climate: it's so scientists can work out what contribution to warming is the result of greenhouse gases that humans produce, and what is down to changes in the energy coming from the sun.
She has sat on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and discusses with Jim how it delivers its reports. And as a prominent scientist who speaks out about the dangers of increasing man made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, she explains how she responds to climate change deniers.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Once you've wrapped up this podcast, how about trying a very British cult? |
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| 0:29.0 | Thank you for downloading The Life Scientific from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:34.0 | My guest today works in one of those areas of research that generate considerable heated debate outside the world of science, climate change. |
| 0:43.0 | Joanna Haig is professor of atmospheric physics |
| 0:46.5 | and the head of the Department of Physics |
| 0:48.3 | at Imperial College London, |
| 0:50.0 | where she studies the sun |
| 0:51.5 | and the impact of its radiation on our planet's climate. |
| 0:55.2 | Joanna began her career in meteorology at a time when only scientists were talking about |
| 1:00.0 | how greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were causing the world to heat up. |
| 1:04.1 | She's been part of the IPCC, the international group of scientists that produce reports |
| 1:09.6 | on the state of the world's climate. So inevitably she's come up against the climate change |
| 1:15.0 | deniers who don't believe that global warming is man-made. This year she was |
| 1:20.3 | made a fellow of the Royal Society Society one of the highest accolades a |
| 1:23.3 | scientist can receive and awarded a CBE for services to physics. Joe Hague |
| 1:28.8 | welcome to the life scientific. Thank you. Joe is true't it, that the public today don't seem to be so interested in climate change? |
| 1:37.1 | So how do scientists engage with society in sensible debates about it? |
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