Exeter Climate Conference 2026

The purpose of this session is to highlight some of the major challenges of communicating climate change issues between different audiences, including scientists and the public, and how communication facilitates sustainable behaviour change. It will outline the latest understanding and knowledge gaps around communication, policy and climate services and will suggest how we might improve this in future. The session will also describe and debate a series of questions gathered from policy makers, which we will aim to revisit and address throughout the remainder of the Exeter Climate Forum.

Charting a planned and sustainable route towards meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement requires understanding how the Earth System responds to the emissions – primarily of CO₂ – which we put into the atmosphere. This session will chart the measurement and quantification of the global carbon cycle, how the land and oceans respond and the processes that modulate the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere. It will then discuss how this knowledge guides policy decisions around Net Zero and emissions pathways and their consequences in the future.

This session will examine the latest science on current and future changes in the likelihood, frequency and severity of weather and climate extremes and their impacts, in the UK and worldwide, including the possibility for rapid transitions due to the interplay between natural climate variability and the underlying trend of anthropogenic climate change. We will discuss the implications for adaptation, including the need to address the challenges posed by uncertainty in future projections. Crucially, we will also ask whether some of the potential future changes may extend beyond what can be adapted to, and indeed how “adaptation” is defined in this context

With around 75% of global emissions coming from the energy sector, accelerating decarbonisation of energy is essential to meet global climate goals. This session will provide the current status of the global energy transition, including issues of finance key to COP30, with a transdisciplinary view of challenges that must be overcome as well as insights that will help us map a path to success.

Decarbonisation, at pace, must be our priority. But this is unlikely to be enough to meet the goals of the Paris agreement. What options do we therefore have for engineering our climate through carbon dioxide removal or direct climate intervention? What are the risks and opportunities these approaches present? What robust societal and ethical guardrails can we put in place to ensure responsible research and where appropriate deployment that serves the public interest now and into the future.