What will the role of the Met Office Hadley Centre be?
The Met Office Hadley Centre is a full partner in LWEC. It is essential that NERC and the Met Office are well coordinated as we inform each other’s work on all levels. We have already signed an agreement on a joint research programme. Will LWEC include all NERC’s climate research? No. LWEC will focus on seasonal-to-decadal and local-to-regional climate research. We will have other climate research running alongside and complementing this work. Has it been difficult setting this up? It’s been a very interesting process. Several key reports, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, the Stern Review and the GEO4 report all came out around the same time and made similar points. It became impossible to escape the need to take action urgently. The Treasury [under Gordon Brown’s regime] helped mobilise agencies, departments and research councils when it announced the Fifth Treasury Challenge*. Many of the partners had already started tal
