New centre to battle climate change opens in Britain

A new £1.5m research centre is opening in south west Wales to help fight the battle against climate change.

IBM's innovate Centre of Excellence in Environmental Research and Modelling will support environmental and renewable energy research.

It will use supercomputers to model the melting of the polar ice caps and attract green researchers to Wales. The facility is the result of a collaboration agreement between IBM, Swansea University and Technium, which is managed by Pembrokeshire Council.

Speaking from the Arctic, where she is currently on a field mission investigating the impact of climate on glaciers, Swansea University professor of glaciology Tavi Murray said the new centre will provide a major boost to climate research in Wales."We have seen a number of ice shelves break up dramatically due to climate warming," she said.

"At present, our current models cannot reproduce these behaviours and we will benefit enormously from the processing capacity and speed of the new supercomputer.

"The provision of this facility is also expected to have an immediate impact on the number of researchers able to perform truly world-class research and will no doubt attract further international research leaders to join us in south west Wales."

Source: BBC