Tamsin Edwards is a Lecturer in Physical Geography at King’s College London and a lead author of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.
In 2016 a high-profile study made predictions for the Antarctic ice sheet response to climate change that would double predictions for total sea level rise this century and change the shape of global coastlines over 500 years. Dr Edwards examined the physical, statistical and narrative bases of these predictions and discussed how different types of evidence – models, observations, reconstructions of the past, and expert judgement – are being drawn on to assess ‘plausible’ scenarios of rapid or irreversible sea level rise.
This talk was given at 2018’s Cambridge Conference on Catastrophic Risk (CCCR2018), the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk’s major international conference, supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation. It focused on four challenges faced by research communities focused on existential and global catastrophic risk research: Challenges of Evaluation and Impact; Challenges of Evidence; Challenges of Scope and Focus; and Challenges in Communication.