An international team led by UNSW climate change researchers has won the inaugural 2010 Future Justice Prize for its efforts to synthesize and update a massive volume of scientific research in the lead-up to the UN Copenhagen conference in December 2009.

The prize, which is given "for leadership and initiative in the advancement of future justice", is awarded by Future Justice, a joint initiative of Future Leaders and the Institute of Legal Studies.

It was awarded for The Copenhagen Diagnosis, a project initiated and led by Professor Matthew England with colleagues Dr Ben McNeil, Professor Andy Pitman and Professor Steve Sherwood from the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre.

That report had 27 authors in total, including three other Australians - Professor David Karoly from University of Melbourne, Dr Ian Allison from the Australian Antarctic Division, and Professor Nathan Bindoff from the University of Tasmania - with other authors being leading international scientists, including from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, NASA and Stanford University.

The Copenhagen Diagnosis was an assessment and synthesis of the most significant climate science to have emerged since the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report of 2007.

It was released in an internationally co-ordinated press event on 25 November 2009. Since then, the site has been visited hundreds of thousands of times and the report has been accessed online tens of thousands of times.

Read the full story on the Faculty of Science newsroom.

Media contact: UNSW Faculty of Science - Bob Beale | 0411 705 435