A Moment of Climate Change History

On Friday 7th October a team of environmentally conscious students drawn from our Climate of Change group, Eco Clubs and STEAM Scholarship programme ventured to the University of Reading for a moment of climate change history. The handing of the COP27 relay baton took place in glorious sunshine between Dr Ed Hawkins and Peter Miskell on its journey from Glasgow to Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh in time for the start of the international conference on 6th November. The students were excited to witness the occasion which was headlined as ‘Running out of Time’ and featured a baton of forest sticks wrapped in silver tubing. In addition to the baton relay our budding climate scientists were treated to a talk by Regius Professor, Keith Shine, a tour of the Atmospheric Observatory and the launch of the weather balloon.

“The whole experience at UoR was amazing and my favourite part was my tour around their atmospheric observatory because we learned so much and our tour guide was fantastic. They had some really swish state of the art equipment and then their back up seemed to be from the 1800s! They have to check their instruments every morning as everything has to happen at 9.00am exactly for continuity; it’s like the weather doesn’t matter after 9.00am!” commented Livi (Year 10)

Mark Budge, STEAM Co-ordinator and trip organiser, reflected, “It was wonderful to be involved in this small moment of History. Our Climate Change students are such a dynamic set; there is great buzz to the group, they bring such a zest and such an energy to the discussions that you always leave more energised than when you arrived. We are forging growing relationships with the world-leading meteorological department and climate experts at the University of Reading and it was fantastic to be able to go there today for this event.”