Richard Arthur Betts is Head of the Climate Impacts strategic area at the

Met Office The Met Office, until November 2000 officially the Meteorological Office, is the United Kingdom's national weather and climate service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and ...

Hadley Centre The Met Office Hadley Centre — named in honour of George Hadley — is one of the United Kingdom's leading centres for the study of scientific issues associated with climate change. It is part of, and based at the headquarters of the Met Off ...

Exeter Exeter ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and the county town of Devon in South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter w ...

, United Kingdom. He is also chair in Climate Impacts at the

University of Exeter The University of Exeter is a research university in the West Country of England, with its main campus in Exeter, Devon. Its predecessor institutions, St Luke's College, Exeter School of Science, Exeter School of Art, and the Camborne School of ...

and the Principal Investigator of the EU FP7 project HELIX (High-End cLimate Impacts and eXtremes). He was a lead author for Working Group I and a contributing author for Working Group II of the

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report ''Climate Change 2007'', the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was published in 2007 and is the fourth in a series of reports intended to assess scientific, technical and soci ...

. He was a lead author for Working Group II of the

IPCC Fifth Assessment Report The Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the fifth in IPCC#Assessment reports, a series of such reports and was completed in 2014.IPCC (2014The IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (A ...

. He is an editor for the International Journal of Global Warming, the Journal of Environmental Investing, and for Earth System Dynamics. He was appointed MBE in the 2019 Birthday Honours. After studying

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

at the

University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...

, Betts switched to

meteorology Meteorology is the scientific study of the Earth's atmosphere and short-term atmospheric phenomena (i.e. weather), with a focus on weather forecasting. It has applications in the military, aviation, energy production, transport, agricultur ...

at the

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...

and then studied for a doctorate in meteorology at the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public research university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as the University Extension College, Reading, an extension college of Christchurch College, Oxford, and became University College, ...

. He is noted for engaging with critics of

climate science Climatology (from Greek , ''klima'', "slope"; and , '' -logia'') or climate science is the scientific study of Earth's climate, typically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of at least 30 years. Climate concerns the atmospher ...

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

and was selected by

TIME Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

as one of the 140 best Twitter feeds of 2012. He was awarded the 2019 Climate Science Communications Award by the

Royal Meteorological Society The Royal Meteorological Society is an organization that promotes academic and public engagement in weather and climate science. Fellows of the Society must possess relevant qualifications, but Members can be lay enthusiasts. It publishes vari ...

References

External links

Science must end climate confusion
Viewpoint for

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

news.
Widening the climate conversation
Soapbox Science.
What is the evidence for changing variability in climates from year to year?
Review commissioned by the UK Government's Foresight Project, Migration and Global Environmental Change. * Website fo
High-End cLimate Impacts and eXtremes
Living people British climatologists Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change contributing authors Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead authors Alumni of the University of Bristol Alumni of the University of Birmingham Alumni of the University of Reading UK Met Office staff and researchers Year of birth missing (living people) Members_of_the_Order_of_the_British_Empire {{UK-academic-bio-stub