Climate Change Science and Research Opportunities in 2022 and Beyond

The COP26 in Glasgow last year has succeeded in reviving the momentum of political and business communities in fighting climate change. This will open enormous opportunities for science and research in 2022.

Science is already incorporated into the United Nations formal climate agenda for 2022. In August last year, the IPCC released the AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis report, which provided unequivocally evidence that human activities have caused climate change.

This year, in February 2022, the IPCC will again release its latest research on how global warming affects people and ecosystems. A month later, it will provide an analysis of the options to curb emissions and stop climate change.

The editorial from Nature discusses the role of the scientific community – their expertise and skills, and research can be applied to reduce emissions and speed up the uptake of clean energy and technologies.

The role of research and science has a vital role to play on how to speed up net-zero emissions, and these include the following:

• providing cost-effective solutions on how developing countries can phase out fossil and integrate more renewable energy into the grid,
• supplying a new generation of more affordable electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles and transportation,
• innovations like direct carbon capture and artificial methods to cool the planet,
• urban and infrastructure designs that lower carbon emissions and energy consumption,
• evaluating policies and tracking commitments made by governments and businesses, and
• the impacts extreme natural disasters from floods in Germany to fires in Australia, the cost of climate change especially in low-income countries and who should pay for them, and many others.

These issues will be revisited in the coming COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

To read the whole article, click the link below: