QUEST: Quantifying and Understanding the Earth System
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Meetings | QUEST Finale Event
QUEST Finale Event
Earth System Science and Climate Policy: Relevant Outcomes of the NERC QUEST Programme
4 November 2010
10am - 4pm
Church House Conference Centre,
Westminster, London, SW1P 3NZ
QUEST held its Finale Event on 4th November 2010 at Church House, London to celebrate its scientific achievements. The scope of research QUEST has covered includes the global atmosphere, oceans, hydrological systems, the cryosphere (ice), biological systems, natural change (climate, volcanic eruptions) and human-induced change and consequences.
QUEST has been operational since 2004, involving around 300 scientists. It has already made a substantial contribution to the peer-reviewed literature with at least 300 publications so far, and many more expected after the project closed. QUEST represents the best of UK world-leading environmental science and excellent research value.
QUEST has actively developed a stronger UK Earth System Science community, with scientists who are now more able to collaborate across traditional disciplinary boundaries to answer questions that can only be tackled with an interdisciplinary approach. QUEST scientists have worked closely with policymakers and other users of scientific research from the early stages of the research to develop and deliver scientific evidence. It has provided advice and information to many organisations including on historic and future emissions to the DECC and the Committee on Climate Change, forestry to DECC and the Copenhagen climate negotiations, bioenergy to Volkswagen, global fish stocks to DfID and the international fishing industry, and managing peatlands to UK land managers.
The QUEST Finale Event presented the key outcomes of the research to policy-makers, synthesising knowledge across projects to address challenging science and policy questions. This presentation included a QUEST summary and eight topic leaflets:
- The QUEST Programme
- Land Use, Bioenergy, Forestry and Mitigation
- Climate Impacts: fish stocks, food security and biodiversity
- Biogeochemical Feedbacks
- Carbon Cycle Feedbacks
- The Rules of Fire
- Large and Rapid Climate Change
- Data Synthesis
- The QUEST Earth System Model
The programme for the day is below.
Programme
| Chair: Lord Selborne | |
| 09:15 | Coffee/tea and registration |
| 10:00 | Welcome and Introduction Professor Alan Thorpe, NERC Chief Executive |
| 10:05 | Key questions QUEST set out to answer and how far we got? Professor Colin Prentice, QUEST Programme Leader |
| 10:35 | Science keynote speaker Professor Joe Alcamo - Chief Scientist, United Nations Environment Programme |
| 10:50 | Policy keynote speaker Professor John Beddington |
| 11:05 | Tea and coffee |
| Chair: Professor Meric Srokosz, University of Southampton | |
| 11:20 | Theme 1: How important are biotic feedbacks for 21st century climate change? Dr Eleanor Blyth - QESM, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology |
| 11:40 | Theme 2: How are climate and atmospheric composition regulated on time scales up to a million years? Dr Eric Wolff - DESIRE, British Antarctic Survey |
| 12: 00 | Questions and Answers |
| 12: 15 | Lunch and networking opportunity to "ask the experts" |
| 13:30 | Theme 3: Mitigation and impacts a. Dr Manuel Barange - Plymouth Marine Laboratory b. Professor Pete Smith - University of Aberdeen |
| 14:00 | Questions and Answers |
| 14:20 | Summary David Warrilow - Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) |
| 15:00 | Coffee and networking opportunity to "ask the experts" |
| 16:00 | Close |