内容摘要：The statement signed by 60 countries sets out an ambition to reduce digital divides by promoting AI accessibility, and ensuring the tech's development is "transparent", "safe" as well as "secure and trustworthy".

The statement signed by 60 countries sets out an ambition to reduce digital divides by promoting AI accessibility, and ensuring the tech's development is "transparent", "safe" as well as "secure and trustworthy".

Multiple studies have suggested that parts of the Greenland ice sheet would become much more vulnerable to runaway melting if global warming reached 1.5-2C above pre-industrial levels. However, the precise positions of such tipping points are very uncertain, and a full-scale collapse would likely take many thousands of years.The Rockströms have lived on the Abel Tasman while studying climate physics at the University of Bergen, balancing their studies with expeditions.

While much of the data they are gathering will have to be sent back to laboratories for analysis, Alex says the raw figures from seawater measurements they have already taken suggest the waters around Greenland are colder and less salty than before – a sign of ice sheet melting.Prof David Thornalley, an ocean and climate scientist at University College London, explains that, over time, the influx of freshwater flowing off the Greenland ice sheet is likely to weaken the main current that runs the length of the Atlantic and has a major influence on the climate.The melting of the ice sheet also raises global sea levels, increasing the risks of coastal flooding.

As well as potentially affecting the balance of the marine ecosystem, Prof Thornalley says melting ice might also produce a feedback process, “whereby the meltwater causes the ocean circulation changes, which leads to warmer waters reaching glaciers that flow into the ocean, thus causing faster melting and retreat of the glacier”.Alex hopes the data they gather along the Northwest Passage will be significant.

“I think it's very easy to underestimate the value of the data that can be collected from a sailing yacht like this... The big ships, the big icebreakers, are so limited in where they can go.”

The crew of the Abel Tasman still have a long and challenging way to go.If you have the stomach for it, you can climb the narrow crumbling stone spiral staircase to reach the roof of St Nicholas' Church in Rodmersham.

From the top of the Norman church you get a panoramic view of north Kent. Directly below there is an apple orchard, beyond that fields of arable farmland with the occasional house, and in the distance the town of Sittingbourne, silhouettes of Thames Estuary heavy industry visible against the sky.This is the land where Quinn Estates developers want to build 8,400 homes, new schools and a new road.

"It's an absolutely colossal development, it will have a devastating impact on this area," says Monique Bonney.She grew up in Rodmersham and after living and working across the world returned to the village. She got married in St Nicholas' Church and has been an independent councillor for the area for 18 years.