Tamsin Edwards

In a special edition of Private Passions for COP26, Michael Berkeley talks to Dr Tamsin Edwards about her career as a climate scientist and her lifelong passion for music.

As a child, Tamsin wanted to be a concert pianist and she went on to play the clarinet, saxophone and double bass, and to sing in choirs. Music is still a vital part of her life but now she is one of our leading climate scientists, at King’s College London, studying the uncertainties of climate model predictions, particularly in relation to rising sea levels.

In 2018 she joined the author team for the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body responsible for assessing the science related to climate change. Instantly recognizable with her trademark cropped blue hair, she is a passionate science communicator, blogging, writing for newspapers and frequently appearing on radio and television.

Tamsin tells Michael how performing music helped her to develop the confidence to speak about science to governments, corporations and the public. We hear part of a Beethoven sonata that brings back memories of the terror she felt playing it for her Grade 8 Piano exam. She chooses music by Liszt for her mother, a concert pianist, and we hear her late father playing the trumpet with his New Orleans jazz band.

And Tamsin talks movingly about her debilitating treatment for bowel cancer, paying tribute to the love and support of her partner, the television presenter Dallas Campbell, with piano music by Philip Glass.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3