Scientist and former Challoner's pupil talks about climate change

Dr Isabel Ansorge, a senior lecturer in oceanography at the University of Cape Town, and former pupil of Dr Challoner's, developed a love of the water whilst taking sailing courses at Hillingdon as a child.
Now she and colleagues help push forward the frontiers of knowledge on issues such as climate change and collect data which could be used in the conservation of fish stocks.
Dr Ansorge has spent 16 years exploring the treacherous Southern Seas south of Africa to gather research. She makes frequent trips to Marion Island, where wind gusts reach up to 200km per hour and summer temperatures average just 7.5C, to collect data.
At Gerrards Cross Memorial Hall on Wednesday (Feb 3) she described how, by epoxying (effectively glueing) tags onto the head of elephant seals, scientists can collect data from waters into which humans cannot venture for most of the year due to extreme cold.
The audience was shown graphics of the actual journey taken by eight seals over 300 days; they travelled 2,500 km to the Antarctic and back, which they do four times in a year.
It is hoped that this technology, which measures temperature and salinity among other things, will help scientists understand why, for example, albatross and seals always fish in certain areas, and that this in turn may contribute to scientists' understanding of how to conserve fish stocks.
She said ocean currents had a vital part to play in controlling the climate and this is why two points on the globe that are on the same latitude, such as Britain which is on the gulf stream, and southern Canada which is not, have vastly different climates.
There is no doubt that the world is getting warmer, she said, showing bar charts demonstrating the rise in C02 emissions over both hundreds and thousands of years. The exceptionally cold winter in Europe this year, and other freak weather conditions that appear to add strength to the voices of David Miliband's "flat-earthers", are caused by El Nino, a climate pattern across the Pacific Ocean that varies every three to seven years.
She said: "It (climate change) is happening and we are doing a lot of it. People say we've seen these up and downs before and that's true, but it's the rate (that's important), we are accelerating the rate. El Nino and other systems cause the ups and the downs, and people confuse that with global warming, but the general trend is up. The Maldives will soon be gone."
Wolfgang Ansorge, a member of the sailing club and Dr Ansorge's father said: "None of us had ever seen a global overview like this, and as sailors who are very familiar with the sea, we were convinced by her that the trend cannot be reversed as the damage has been done over along time and is now too deep-rooted. Her data graphs compiled from the research results of oceanographers worldwide were more than convincing."