11 May 2026; 13:00-14:00 GMT+1
Presenter: Dr Pete Falloon
Biography
Dr Pete Falloon (FRMetS, FRSA) leads the Met Office’s Climate Service for Defra on Food, Farming and Natural Environment. Pete has over 25 years of experience in the impacts of climate and land use change on food systems and the environment. Pete has been at the Met Office Hadley Centre since 2004 and led the Climate Impacts Modelling team from 2009-2019. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and of the Royal Meteorological Society, and a contributing author to the UK’s Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA). Pete is also Associate Professor in Climate Resilient Food Systems at the University of Bristol, and Sustainability Director for Food Drink Devon CIC.
Paper/article to be presented
Title: Acceleration of global warming due to carbon-cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model
Authors: Peter M. Cox, Richard A. Betts, Chris D. Jones, Steven A. Spall & Ian J. Totterdell
Link to paper: Acceleration of global warming due to carbon-cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model | Nature
PDF: Acceleration of global warming PDF
Session Highlights
The latest My Climate Risk Interdisciplinary Learning Group session offered a compelling and wide‑ranging exploration of climate risk, systems thinking, and the science-policy interface, led by Prof. Pete Falloon. Drawing on more than two decades of experience spanning academia, government, and applied climate services, Pete used a single, influential scientific paper as a starting point for a much broader reflection on how interdisciplinary science evolves, and why it matters.
The session opened with a discussion of one of the earliest climate modelling studies to explicitly integrate the carbon cycle into a global climate model. Although published over twenty years ago, the paper remains significant for its insight that carbon-climate feedbacks could substantially accelerate future warming. Pete walked participants through key figures from the study, explaining how warming‑driven changes in vegetation, soils and ocean uptake could lead to higher atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and an additional 1-1.5°C of warming compared with models that excluded these processes. What emerged clearly was a reminder that what models include, and exclude, fundamentally shapes the futures they describe.
Rather than treating this work as a historical artefact, Pete used it to illustrate how scientific understanding develops iteratively and unevenly over time. He reflected candidly on the uncertainties that still surround feedback processes, noting that many feedbacks only become visible under levels of warming we have not yet fully observed. Polls and discussion highlighted a shared recognition among participants: while Earth system models are now far more sophisticated, challenges remain in evaluating robustness, communicating uncertainty, and translating insights into timely action.
From here, the session shifted into a more personal but no less instructive mode. Pete traced his own intellectual journey, from early influences rooted in farming, food businesses, and family history, to formative fieldwork experiences at the University of Reading, and later research roles at Rothamsted and the Met Office. These reflections powerfully illustrated how interdisciplinary thinking often emerges not from grand design, but from curiosity, mentorship, and an openness to joining dots across disciplines. Feedbacks, interactions, and whole‑system perspectives became recurring themes, both in the science and in Pete’s career.
A substantial portion of the session focused on the practical integration of climate science into policy and decision‑making. Pete described his current role leading the Met Office’s Food, Farming and Natural Environment Climate Service for DEFRA, which feeds directly into national risk assessments, adaptation policy cycles, and food security reporting. Through concrete examples, such as translating climate projections into cattle heat‑stress indicators or identifying “quick‑win” farm adaptation measures, he showed how abstract climate information can be reshaped into actionable insights, while still acknowledging the trade‑offs and secondary impacts such actions may create.
The conversation broadened further to consider whole food systems and cascading climate risks. Pete emphasised that climate impacts do not stop at the farm gate; they propagate through labour conditions, transport, storage, diets, waste, and trade. Managing these risks, he argued, requires systems approaches that move beyond silos, engage diverse stakeholders, and explicitly consider feedbacks between adaptation, mitigation, and wider environmental outcomes. Work on climate‑resilient, net‑zero food systems illustrated how deeply social, behavioural and governance dimensions are intertwined with biophysical science.
The session closed on a reflective and cautiously hopeful note. While acknowledging frustration at slow political progress and the constraints of electoral cycles, Pete highlighted the growing importance of local action, industry innovation, and bottom‑up change. From regenerative agriculture initiatives to sustainability leadership within local food businesses, these efforts when underpinned by robust science can collectively make a meaningful difference. Throughout, humility emerged as a recurring motif: an acceptance of complexity, uncertainty, and learning as central features of working with climate and food systems.
Questions and answers
How confident can we be that carbon-climate feedbacks are correctly represented in current models?
Pete acknowledged that representation of feedbacks has improved significantly, particularly through coordinated efforts such as international model intercomparison projects. However, he noted that feedback strength and spatial patterns still vary widely between models, and many processes are difficult to validate empirically because their full effects only emerge under strong warming.
How do political cycles affect the ability to act on climate and food system risks?
Pete described political cycles as one of the biggest challenges to sustained climate action. He suggested that resilience can partly come from international collaboration, long‑term institutions, and non‑state actors stepping in when political momentum falters. Local and regional action, he argued, can sometimes progress faster than national or international policy.
Can local, grassroots sustainability initiatives really make a difference?
In Pete’s view, they already are. He highlighted innovation within farming and food businesses, often driven by early adopters acting without strong policy incentives. The key challenge is ensuring consistency, evidence, and shared standards so that good practice is recognisable, scalable and supported.
What role will international trade play in climate‑resilient food systems?
Pete emphasised that trade is both a vulnerability and a potential adaptation mechanism. For countries like the UK, which rely heavily on food imports, resilience requires understanding climate risks in source regions, diversifying supply, embedding climate considerations into trade relationships, and strengthening domestic production where feasible, particularly for nutritionally important foods.
How can systems approaches help interdisciplinary work in practice?
While systems approaches can make work more complex, Pete argued that they enable a fuller understanding of interactions, trade‑offs and unintended consequences. Crucially, they also support collaboration and consensus‑building across disciplines, sectors and stakeholders, something he sees as essential for tackling climate risk in real‑world contexts.