How do you go about predicting something as complex as the Earth's climate? In this podcast — featuring climate modelling experts Emily Shuckburgh and Chris Budd — we explore what those climate models look like, the uncertainties involved in climate modelling, and also why the predictions need to be taken seriously despite those uncertainties.

We also look at the simplest climate model of them all— the energy balance model — and explain the famous butterfly effect in just one minute.

Emily Shuckburgh is a mathematician and climate scientist and Director of Cambridge Zero. The podcast features clips from Emily Shuckburgh's talk at the Cambridge Festival in March 2021, which was hosted by the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge. You can watch the full talk here.

Chris Budd OBE is a Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Bath, who works on climate models. You can read Budd's Plus article about climate modelling here.