National Centre for Earth Observation

"No one else has pulled these elements together. Using a number of universities and activities such as the Southampton oceanography centre and the Met Office we created a nucleus and a hub to build on" Prof O'Neill

A new centre was set up a few weeks ago, based at Reading University, but combining research and poling resources from all across Britain. Its objective is to monitor Earth's 'health'. It is to focus on climate change, rather predictably, and will collect data from centres and satellites from all over the world, as well as from space. The centre will be headed by Professor Alan O'Neill, who explained their brief as uniting many new research techniques, thus far disparately collected. Here's the BBC's coverage of the story.