It was time for our first virtual speaker session of this academic year. Dr Chris Spencer, Senior Lecturer in Geography and Environmental Management in the School of Architecture and Environment at the University of the West of England, kindly agreed to give up his time to speak to Key Stage 4 and 5 students about the link between water and carbon cycles, hurricanes and increasing hazards. This theme proved very popular, with 49 schools accessing the session from across the UK and Europe.
After the formal welcome, introductions and usual housekeeping, I handed over to Chris. He began by discussing the natural greenhouse effect, including radiation paths and absorption. The animation that he included here really helped enhance students’ understanding.
Next, Chris displayed a diagram of the carbon cycle to highlight the various stores and processes.
He also spent some time analysing and interpreting a graph that showed atmospheric CO2 levels over time, as recorded by the Mauna Loa Observatory. Chris then looked at the enhanced greenhouse effect, global mean surface temperature change and projections for the 21st century. He later referred to the water cycle.
Chris posed the question to the audience: How is/might this make the world more hazardous? He provided some prompts, such as sea level rise, more forest fires, more/more powerful hurricanes, drought and heatwaves. Meanwhile, teachers gathered responses from students and added these to the chat feed.
Chris’ slide with the key points to consider was appreciated too.
Afterwards, Chris explained how hurricanes form. He projected a diagram to show the life cycle of a North Atlantic hurricane and introduced us to Tropical Tracker. He later asked the audience: Are hurricanes increasing due to changes in the water and carbon cycle? Chris referred to different sources at this point, e.g. maps; newspaper articles; headlines; satellite imagery; graphs. He also explained about the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale and picked up on recent discussions regarding the inclusion of a category 6.
Chris referenced some of the hazards associated with hurricanes and challenged students to contemplate if any of these were becoming more hazardous due to changes in the water and carbon cycles. Again, he outlined the key things to consider before investigating changes to the water cycle via a series of maps, graphs, diagrams and satellite images.
The audience were asked: What other factors influence how hazardous hurricanes are? Chris discussed mitigation, preparation, response and recovery in turn and focused on a couple of contrasting case studies, e.g. Dhaka, Bangladesh and Miami, USA. He invited students to decide where they might prefer to be should a hurricane strike and why. The consensus was Miami, USA, due to its status as an HIC with money and expertise available for mitigation, research, development, etc.
Finally, Chris challenged students to reflect upon changes in the water and carbon cycles, e.g. changes in rainfall patterns in interior regions; increased population at the coast; reduced resilience of populations; reduced ability to adapt, and if these might affect any of the human influences on how hazardous hurricanes are, e.g. exposure and vulnerability.
Chris’ summary provided several clear points for students to take away with them.
His concluding slide shared details about geography courses on offer at the University of the West of England (UWE), open days and some excellent videos relating to coastal management that Chris has produced in conjunction with Time for Geography (https://timeforgeography.co.uk/videos_list/coasts/).
Towards the end of the session, attendees were invited to add questions to the chat feed for Chris to respond to. There were many, suggesting that his talk had stimulated deeper thinking.
Some of their questions can be viewed below:
Are there any actions we can take in the UK that can help countries like Bangladesh?
Will changes in the atmospheric temperatures impact the way rising air in hurricanes cools and descends? What overall impact might this have on hurricanes?
Are there any other significant actions Bangladesh has recently taken other than the ones you have shown – raised shelters?
What makes a country the best equipped for a natural hazard? Any examples?
How can we increase hazard resilience for the most vulnerable?
How useful do you think hazard profiling is in this changing landscape?
Teachers were later requested to complete an online evaluation form to enable us to capture both staff and pupil voice, as well as gain an insight into what teachers and students would like to see us plan for 2026.
Their ‘concluding comments‘ can be read below:
Informative lecture with excellent synoptic links – really useful.
Excellent summary of issues, clearly explained.
Pitched at the right level.
Very useful in asking questions of the cycle changes and synoptic links.
Really good for synoptic links across the course. Great revision!
Informative. Helped with synoptic links. Revision tool.
Excellent synoptic links and connections to topics covered in class.
Outstanding – insightful – interesting – relevant – helpful.
Great extension of the curriculum, exposure to data sources and opportunity to hear an expert.
Very informative and well-linked to current news and our current KS5 hazards unit.
Insightful, probing, organised, knowledgeable and free.
Engaging, enthusing and extending.
Excellent retrieval of Paper 1- AQA GCSE Geography.
Interesting examination of the synoptic links between the water and carbon cycle and tropical storms.
Insightful, relevant, well-pitched.
Such a valuable session. The pitch to students was perfect. Students going into mock exams would have certainly benefited from this session.
A very useful look at water/carbon/storm hazards.
The session was informative and pitched correctly for the A level students. It linked well to the specification.
Excellent! Really useful.
Some good information; more appropriate for KS5.
Thank you very much. We look forward to utilising this information in our exams!
Thank you so much. This has been really helpful ahead of mock exams next week.
Thank you for this. Good consolidation for our Year 13 students in particular.
Thank you very much. This has helped linked the water and carbon and hazards unit. Brilliant for the synoptic essays.
Thank you for answering our question. Useful for exams coming up for our Year 13s.
Thank you very much, our Year 12 and 13 have really appreciated this.
Thank you. Really good synoptic links between different units and great revision too!
Thank you – this has been really helpful, especially with synoptic links.
Great synoptic links between our topics and lots of discussion as our students were being dismissed at the end of the day. Thank you!
Thank you very much. This has been very useful and helpful.
Thank you – we have found this very useful for supporting our hazards A Level unit.
Thank you from Queen Anne’s! An excellent lecture with great synoptic links.
Thank you from Cyprus!
Thanks so much for a wonderful talk from the British School of Paris.
Thank you for organising the talk. My students found it really useful.
Just wanted to say thank you again for the session today, our students really enjoyed the talk and will certainly be going into their mock exams next week having benefitted from this!
Thank you for yesterday, my students really enjoyed it.
Thank you for yesterday’s course – it was excellent!
We really enjoyed the virtual speaker session yesterday.
Thank you for organising the lecture this week – we thought it was great.
If you found this speaker session enjoyable, then why not try and zoom into the next one led by Chris’ colleague, Dr Harry West (see the below image for further details). A very timely theme given the recent discussions at COP30 held in Belem, Brazil.
