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Photo competition asks what climate change means to you
Enter the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s #BackClimateAction image competition for a chance to win prizes from Getty Images and tickets to the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition.
The competition is looking for images that illustrate what you’d like to protect from climate change, what feelings it provokes, and what tackling the challenge of climate change will lead to.
Museum Director Sir Michael Dixon, who is part of the judging panel for the competition, said: ‘Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing our society. This competition gives everyone a chance to reflect on what it means to us now and in the future.’
If you’re looking for inspiration, you can drop into the Museum’s Attenborough Studio all this week where some of the entries so far are displayed, or into Wildlife Photographer of the Year to check out categories including ‘The World in Our Hands’.
To enter the competition, submit your photo with an 80-word caption on Instagram or Twitter using the hashtag #BackClimateAction. The closing date for entries is 17:00 on Friday, 6 March 2015.
Tackling climate change
The Museum is committed to understanding and tackling climate change through innovative scientific research.
The breadth of the collections allows studies that require lots of samples, such as Steve Brooks’ ‘midge thermometer’. This tool uses thousands of tiny midge larvae heads in lake sediments to map past temperatures and calibrate climate models.
Researchers at the Museum are also using marine organisms in vulnerable ecosystems to study the effects of climate change, from bryozoans in the polar regions to coral reefs both present and past. A large study of fossils from North Yorkshire recently revealed the devastating impacts of climate change on marine life.
Our comprehensive UK plant collections are also being used to document changes in response to increasing carbon dioxide levels and warming. Sir Dixon comments:
‘Natural history collections can be considered as data series mapped through time, showing how climate change affected and continues to affect the delicate balance of ecosystems. Museum research helps us as a society make informed decisions about the future and how to tackle climate change.’