History of climate variability and change
Climate variability includes all the variations in the climate that last longer than individual weather events, whereas the term climate change only refers to those variations that persist for a longer period of time, typically decades or more. In addition to the general meaning in which climate change may refer to any time in Earth's history, the term is commonly used to describe the climate change that is now underway.
4 episodes
Episodes in this category also belong to the following categories:
Climate change
Melvyn Bragg examines predictions and solutions for climate change and discusses whether the effects of global warming are already upon us, and if so, how we can really hope to stop them.
6 January 2000
Featuring: John Houghton, George Monbiot
Ice ages
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ice ages, periods when the temperature of the Earth has dropped to low levels.
14 February 2013
Featuring: Jane Francis, Richard Corfield, Carrie Lear
The Late Devonian Extinction
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the disappearance of up to 70 per cent of species roughly 370 million years ago at the end of The Age of Fishes, and the range of possible causes.
11 March 2021
Featuring: Jessica Whiteside, David Bond, Mike Benton
The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the causes and effects of the highest global temperatures in the last 65m years, when Arctic sea surfaces reached up to 23 C for c100,000 years.
16 March 2017
Featuring: Dame Jane Francis, Mark Maslin, Tracy Aze