The British professor Jim Skea has been elected to head the UN’s climate expert panel, taking the helm of the organisation charged with distilling the best science to guide global policy in a crucial decade in human history.
Skea, who is a professor of sustainable energy at Imperial College London and who co-chaired the report on solutions in the panel’s latest round of publications, said in a statement he was “humbled” to have been elected chair at a meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Nairobi, Kenya.
He succeeds the South Korean economist Hoesung Lee, who is stepping down after nearly eight years at the helm.
Last year Skea warned that it was “now or never” to limit global heating to the more ambitious Paris agreement goal of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, as the IPCC wrapped up a cycle of bumper assessments with a synthesis report that urged dramatic reductions in planet-heating emissions.
With extreme weather sweeping the planet – from devastating floods to blistering heatwaves – the IPCC warned in March that the world was on course to cross the key 1.5C global heating threshold in about a decade and said the impacts of warming were hitting faster than expected.
In an interview with Climatica, Skea said recently that he was “genetically optimistic” and underscored that humans still had power over the future trajectory of warming.
“The challenges are huge, but the key thing is to not become paralysed into inaction by a sense of despair,” he said.
Prof Sir Brian Hoskins, chair of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, said: “It is wonderful to see [the UK’s] position reinvigorated by the appointment of Jim Skea as the new chair of the IPCC. He has a wealth of relevant experience behind him and a sure foot in treading the minefield of international politics. We must all hope that, under his guidance, the IPCC can give the countries of the world the evidence and help that they require to turn their words into actions.”