UK invests £60 million in climate research centre

The UK government pledged 60 million pounds ($95 million) to support the Met Office Hadley Centre's Climate Programme until at least 2015 to keep Britain at the forefront of climate science research.

British Climate change minister
Greg Barker speaks in front of a new
interactive Google Earth map showing the impact
 of a rise in temperatures on Earth,
 in London July 14, 2010. REUTERS/Paul Hackett

The Met Office Hadley Centre is one of the world's leading climate change research centres. Largely funded by the UK government, it informs and advises on climate science issues.

"This investment will significantly improve their capacity to produce the ground-breaking robust evidence for which they are internationally renowned," UK Energy and Climate Change Minister Greg Barker said in a statement on Wednesday.

The government said it had committed almost 50 million pounds to the centre's research and climate modelling programme until 2015 and another nearly 11 million pounds for new supercomputer capacity and hardware.

Many UK science and research institutions have seen cuts in funding over the past couple of years as the government seeks to reduce the UK's deficit. ($1 = 0.6314 British pounds)

(Reporting by Nina Chestney, editing by Jane Baird)

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