Tamsin Edwards

Edwards became interested in physics after reading A Brief History of Time.[5] The daughter of Michael Edwards,[6] she completed A-Levels in Physics, Chemistry and Maths at St Margaret's School, in Exeter.[7] She studied physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. She completed a PhD in Particle Physics at the University of Manchester under the supervision of Brian Cox.[1] Her thesis investigated the production of Z bosons, detected by their subsequent decay to muons, using data collected at the Tevatron.[1]

Edwards joined the Open University as a lecturer, working in the Palaeoenvironmental Change team.[8][9] She uses computer models to predict and study climate change,[10][11] with a particular interest in the impact on sea level rise of changes in the Antarctic ice sheet.[12] She studied how a glacier's grounding line (the point at which is separates from a continent's bedrock and floats into the sea) affects the rate of flow of glaciers, and estimated the effects of positive feedback.[13][14] In 2017 Edwards joined King's College London as a lecturer in geography.[15] She will be a lead author for Chapter 9 (Ocean, cryosphere, and sea level change) of the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.[16]

Edwards writes a popular science blog hosted by the Public Library of Science (PLOS).[4] She has written for The Guardian and contributed chapters to books about climate change.[17][18][19] Working with the Met Office, Edwards created educational resources about sea level rise for the 2017 United Nations Climate Change Conference ("COP23").[20]

In 2014 she gave a TEDx talk at CERN, How to Love Uncertainty in Climate Science.[21] After fights between climate scientists and sceptics on Twitter in 2014, Edwards was part of a dinner party discussing how they could calm the debate.[22] The dinner included David Rose and Richard A. Betts, and Edwards was the only woman.[22] In 2015 she was celebrated as one of twenty women "making waves" at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference.[23] She won the 2016 British Science Association Charles Lyell Award for Environmental Sciences.[13][24] She discussed how computer models can be used to predict ice sheet collapse and how to communicate uncertainty.[24] In 2017 she was profiled in the HuffPost Australia's Breaking The Ice series.[25] She is a speaker at the 2018 Bluedot Festival.[26][27][28]

Edwards has acted as a scientific consultant for the BBC. She was a consultant on the BBC's Climate Change by Numbers, which won an American Association for the Advancement of Science award for Science Journalism,[29] and a 2015 award for "Best Presentation of Science in an Environment Issue" from EuroPAWS.[30] She has appeared on BBC Radio 4[31][32] and BBC World Service.[33]

She was awarded the 2020 Climate Science Communications Award by the Royal Meteorological Society.[34]

On 28 January 2021, Edwards took part in a panel event of international experts called Climate Change: Why should we care?, organised by the Science Museum Group.[35]

In July 2023, at the Bluedot Festival, Edwards announced she has become a Professor at King’s College.

• Nick, Faezeh M.; Vieli, Andreas; Langer Andersen, Morten; Joughin, Ian; Payne, Anthony J; Edwards, Tamsin L.; Pattyn, Frank; van de Wal, Roderik (2013). "Future sea-level rise from Greenland's main outlet glaciers in a warming climate" (PDF). Nature. 497 (7448): 235–238. Bibcode:2013Natur.497..235N. doi:10.1038/nature12068. PMID 23657350. S2CID 4400824.
• Hawkins, Ed; Edwards, Tamsin; McNeall, Doug (2014). "Pause for thought" (PDF). Nature Climate Change. 4 (3): 154–156. Bibcode:2014NatCC...4..154H. doi:10.1038/nclimate2150. S2CID 85406377.
• Ritz, Catherine; Edwards, Tamsin L.; Durand, Gaël; Payne, Anthony J; Peyaud, Vincent; Hindmarsh, Richard C. A. (2015). "Potential sea-level rise from Antarctic ice-sheet instability constrained by observations" (PDF). Nature. 528 (7580): 115–118. Bibcode:2015Natur.528..115R. doi:10.1038/nature16147. PMID 26580020. S2CID 4462953.
• Edwards, Tamsin (4 December 2017). "Future of the Sea: Current and Future Impacts of Sea Level Rise on the UK". Foresight Future of the Sea project. Government Office for Science.
• Edwards, Tamsin L.; Brandon, Mark A.; Durand, Gaël; Edwards, Neil R.; Golledge, Nicholas R.; Holden, Philip B.; et al. (2019). "Revisiting Antarctic ice loss due to marine ice-cliff instability". Nature. 566 (7742): 58–64. Bibcode:2019Natur.566...58E. doi:10.1038/s41586-019-0901-4. PMID 30728522. S2CID 59606547.