Sky News Launches Online Climate Calculator

Last Updated on Thursday, 10 December 2009 23:51 Thursday, 10 December 2009 23:51

Visitors to the Sky News website, Skynews.com, can now attempt to predict the effect on the planet of the next 20 years worth of carbon emissions, using a new Climate Calculator tool. The calculator, accessible through a link on the site (skynews.com/climatecalculator), is designed to show a range of outcomes, as calculated by experts at the Met Office, dependant on when, if and by how much global carbon emissions are reduced in the near future.

Using data from the Met Office’s Hadley Centre, the Climate Calculator is able to work out an average rise in global temperatures using a variety of scenarios selected by users. The temperature rise calculations are made based on the average rise per year in degrees Celsius since records of the world’s pre-industrial temperatures began in around 1850.

Users of the new tool are first asked to select in which year they think carbon emissions might peak from a list of the following dates: 2016, 2020, 2025, 2030 or ‘no date’. They are then asked to select a percentage figure between minus 1% and minus 5% to represent an annual reduction in carbon emissions beginning from their chosen ‘peak’ year. The calculator then asks users to select a date in the future, and it will estimate what the temperature rise is likely to be by that year.

For example, if users select an emissions peak of 2030 and a reduction in carbon emissions of -3% from then on, the calculator estimates that by 2049 the average global temperature would be 2 degrees Celsius higher than it was in the 1850s.

More detailed information on the possible affects of climate change for the given scenarios can also be viewed under four headings ‘general’, ‘geography’, ‘animals’ and ‘health’.

Users can also drag a slider underneath a globe to see how changes in temperature will be mapped out across the planet. An increase in degrees Celsius is represented by a deepening of colour in areas that are most affected by the temperature rise.

Skynews,com’s Executive Producer, Julian March, said: “The Climate Calculator uses exclusive new Met Office data to show some of the real consequences of climate change –on the planet. We are always looking to connect our audience to the bigger stories in a way that is relevant and meaningful to them – and while the politicians and activists in Copenhagen discuss the wider policies and national commitments around carbon emissions, this new tool helps to show people, in a simple way, what the direct impact of those decisions, and our own individual actions, might be on global temperatures, landscapes, animal and human life.”

Throughout the conference, Sky News Correspondents around the world will also report on how climate change could affect some of the planet’s poorest communities. Sky News’ Africa Correspondent Emma Hurd will undertake an Antarctic Expedition with a team monitoring the continuing melting of the polar ice cap and its potentially devastating effect on global water levels, habitats and wildlife. RTS Television Journalist of the Year Alex Crawford, meanwhile, will be in Nepal to report on the fastest retreating glacier in the Himalayas.

On the 10, 11 and 12 December, Sky News presents ‘Turning Up The Heat’, which will see Anna Botting anchoring from Mumbai, a city whose emissions are set to increase as its population continues to rise, and Andrew Wilson reporting from Brazil; a key player in the block of developing countries involved in climate change negotiations. Every minute, an area larger than three football pitches is lost in the Amazon forest. With 20 per cent of the world's carbon emissions created by deforestation, world leaders are trying to find a way of making the forests worth more alive than dead. Andrew will be in the western-Brazilian state of Acre, the home of Sky’s Rainforest Rescue project which aims to tackle deforestation.