Speaker : Prof.Herbert Huppert, Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Geophysics, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), University of Cambridge

Title : "The fluid mechanics and politics of carbon storage to avert climate catastrophe"

Abstract: The talk will describe the background of atmospheric temperatures in both the distant and recent past. It will explain the definite connection between the carbon dioxide and methane content of the atmosphere and the average global surface temperature. Various predictions into the future will be presented as well as useful ways of restoring a balance, including storage and chemical reaction. The reactions of politicians to these ideas will be discussed.

About the speaker: Prof. Huppert has published using fluid-mechanical principles in applications to the Earth sciences: in meteorology, oceanography and geology. He was a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics (1970–1992) and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (series A), 1994–99, and has been on the Council of the Royal Society (2001–03). He was Chairman of a Royal Society Working Group on bioterrorism, which produced a Report entitled 'Making the UK Safer', on 21 April 2004. He was also chair of the European Academies Science Advisory Committee (EASAC) Working Group which produced a report of the European Parliament and President on carbon capture and storage. He was awarded the 2011 Bakerian lecture for his research into geological fluid dynamics. Since 1990 he has held a part-time Professorship at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Prof. Huppert was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1987. In 2005 he was the only non-American recipient of a prize from the United States National Academy of Sciences, being awarded the Arthur L. Day Prize and Lectureship for contributions to the Earth sciences. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the American Physical Society, and the Academia Europaea.