Climate change institute created

The institute will be dedicated to researching climate change

Climate change has become such a major issue that a leading UK university is to create a dedicated institute to study the subject.

A £12m private donation is to fund the Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London.

It will research the consequences and causes of such environmental change.

Jeremy Grantham, who is funding the institute, says this is "the most important issue we face over the next 50 years".

The donation from the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment will fund 10 additional posts, including researchers, a director and a link between the institute and policy makers.

The institute will be based at the college's South Kensington campus.

'Imperative'

It will bring together scientists from different disciplines - such as public health specialists who will work on the impact of heatwaves; engineers to study reductions in damage from air travel and civil engineers to assess flood risks.

Mr Grantham, chairman of GMO, an investment management company handling assets worth $140bn, says it is "imperative that we find technologies that can be implemented in government policies worldwide".

And Mr Grantham, whose firm is based in Boston in the United States, says he wants more people in business and investment to contribute to such research.

Imperial College is one of the country's leading science centres - which has had 14 Nobel prize winners among its researchers and academic staff.

Imperial's rector, Sir Richard Sykes, says the funding will help scientists to "continue and develop their work to understand and address the greatest challenges facing mankind".

The institute will add to the ranks of universities putting research efforts into climate change - including Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute and the Climatic Research Institute at the University of East Anglia.