The Life Scientific: Pierre Friedlingstein

Discovery

BBC

Science

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2026

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The COP30 climate summit is taking place in the Brazilian city of Belém, a gateway to the Amazon rainforest, which continues to face widespread deforestation. We all know that our climate is changing and that we are largely responsible for this, but we can’t tackle the problem unless we understand what’s going on.

One scientist who’s done more than most to rectify this is Professor Pierre Friedlingstein. He’s a prominent climate scientist and Chair in Mathematical Modelling of the Climate System at Exeter University. His models have transformed our understanding of climate change, revealing a complex dynamical system with carbon at its centre, cycling between the atmosphere, oceans and land, to directly influence the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Pierre is actively involved in assessing the state of our climate through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and, as director of the Global Carbon Budget, estimates the remaining amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted before we breach our global climate targets. It’s the ultimate test of effective climate action and the latest annual update will be released at COP.

Pierre explains how we can all play our part to reduce carbon emissions, and he practises what he preaches - he won’t be flying to COP this year so as to minimise his own carbon footprint.

Transcript

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0:38.1	Hello, I'm Jim Al-Kalili, and today on The Life Scientific on Discovery, we meet Professor Pierre Friedlingstein.
0:45.1	He's a prominent climate scientist and chair in mathematical modelling of the climate system at Exeter University.
0:51.6	His models have transformed our understanding of climate change, revealing a complex
0:56.2	dynamical system with carbon at its centre, cycling between the atmosphere, oceans and the land,
1:02.7	to directly influence the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. He's director of the global
1:08.5	carbon budget, which estimates the remaining amount of carbon dioxide that can be emitted before we breach our global climate targets.
1:17.5	Pierre Friedlingstein, welcome to the Life Scientific.
1:19.8	Thank you.
1:20.8	Now, Pierre, as I understand it, this remaining global carbon budget that I just mentioned is the additional amount of carbon dioxide that we can
1:28.7	afford to emit into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, from deforestation, while limiting
1:34.8	global warming to a specific temperature target. The Paris Agreement's goal, of course, is keeping this
1:39.8	below a two degree rise, preferably one and a half degrees. So how are we doing with this?
1:45.8	Let's take the one and a half degree rise. How long before we reach that? Not so long anymore.
1:51.0	The current level of warming is about 1.3 degrees. So if you look at the amount of carbon,
	...

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