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16 October 2007

"We cannot sit back on climate change"

MMU pair behind IPCC Nobel Prize win

TWO MMU scientists are among those credited for earning the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change the Nobel Peace Prize.

The IPCC was jointly awarded the prize with former US Vice-President Al Gore in Geneva on Friday.

MMU's Professor David Lee and Dr Sarah Raper are among the hundreds of scientists who have contributed research on climate change to the UN body.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the IPCC had galvanised the world to take climate change seriously, and had awarded the famous Peace Prize to "bring into sharper focus the danger of wars within and between states" posed by global warming.

Aviation impacts

Professor Lee's monitoring of emissions caused by aviation and Dr Raper's research into glacial melt have fed into the annual reports that IPCC provides for world's governments which offer neutral summaries of the latest data on climate change.

David Lee, professor of atmospheric chemistry, who advises government departments on the impacts of aviation on climate change says: "I am persuaded by the scientific evidence that global warming is happening. The rate of change is escalating. We cannot sit back."

Professor David Raper, head of MMU's Centre for Air Transport and the Environment, www.cate.mmu.ac.uk has in the past contributed work to the IPCC.