Thursday 1 and Friday 2 March 2007
Organised by Professor Peter Cox, Professor Brian Hoskins CBE FRS, Professor John Mitchell OBE FRS, Dr Tim Palmer FRS and Professor John Pyle FRS
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Professor Nathan Bindoff (Speaker)
Nathan Bindoff is a physical oceanographer, specialising in ocean climate and the overall climate system. This expertise has been recognized by selection as a coordinating lead author for the ocean chapter in the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. With his collaborators he has developed new methods for analysing and interpreting climate variability observations within the oceans. These methods have been used widely. Professor Bindoff has documented some of the first evidence for changes in the heat storage of Mode Waters, in the Indian, Pacific (North and South) and Southern Ocean. He has shown the first evidence of changes in the Earths hydrological cycle (resulting in several papers, one of which is in Nature). Nathan has established the programs and experiments that have determined the total production of Adelie Land Bottom Water formation and its contribution Antarctic Bottom Water Formation, and has also been involved in the development of coupled sea-ice and ocean models in preparation for the Australia ACCESS program. He has a career total of 49 papers in refereed journals (almost all in international journals) and three of which are letters to Nature. In the last 5 years he has published 21 peered reviewed papers. There are 52 conference papers and 30 printed report or short non-refereed notes.
Dr Guy Brasseur (Speaker)
A native of Belgium, Professor Guy P Brasseur holds two engineering degrees and a doctorate in aeronomy from the Free University of Brussels, where his PhD dissertation dealt with the effects of nitrogen oxides on stratospheric ozone. He completed his postdoctoral work at the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, where he worked on advanced models of photochemistry and chemical transport in the middle atmosphere.
Between 1977 and 1981, Professor Brasseur served as an elected member of the Belgian House of Representatives and as a delegate to both the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly in Strasbourg, France, and the Western European Union in Paris.
Professor Brasseur's community leadership posts have included serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Geophysical ResearchAtmospheres, and as Chair of the International Atmospheric Chemistry Project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme. He is a former Chair of the IGBP's Scientific Committee, which promotes Earth system science at the international level, with particular focus on the developing world. Professor Brasseur is also a past president of the Atmospheric Sciences Section of the American Geophysical Union.
In January 2006, Professor Brasseur left the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg to return to the National Center for Atmospheric Research located in Boulder, Colorado, accepting the role as NCAR Associate Director for the Earth and Sun Systems Laboratory.
Dr Piers Forster (Speaker)
Since 2005 Piers Forster has been a Reader of climate change science in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds. He obtained an undergraduate degree in physics from Imperial College and went on to do a doctorate at the University of Reading in 1994, where he stayed more-or-less until 2005. He has also spent time working overseas, particularly at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, where he holds a visiting scientist position. He is an active researcher in many broad-areas of climate change, particularly those associated with identifying causes of climate change, climate feedbacks and the effects of aviation on climate. He has been involved as author, reviewer or contributor with several past reports on climate change, including IPCC climate assessments and WMO ozone assessments, most recently as a coordinating lead author of the "atmospheric composition and radiative forcing" chapter of the 2007 IPCC fourth assessment report, and as a lead author of the IPCC/TEAP special report on safeguarding the ozone layer (2005). He is currently finishing a term as a member of the climate variations and change committee for the American Meteorological Society.
Dr Ann Henderson-Sellers (Panel member)
Ann Henderson-Sellers is the Director of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) based in Geneva in the headquarters of the World Meteorological Organisation.
Ann Henderson-Sellers has been an Earth Systems scientist all her life and a leader in describing and predicting the influence of land-cover and land-use change on climate and human systems for many years. She has a BSc in mathematics, undertook her PhD in collaboration with the U.K. Meteorological Office and earned a D.Sc. in climate science in 1999. She is an elected Fellow of Australia's Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and was awarded the Centenary Medal of Australia for Service to Australian Society in Meteorology in 2003.
Ann is an ISI "most highly cited" author of around 500 publications, including 14 books (http://hcr3.isiknowledge.com/) and an elected Fellow of America's Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. Dr Henderson-Sellers served as the President of International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences' International Commission for Climate between 1991 and 1995. She has chaired the Australian National Committee for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences and has been a member of Australia's Science and Technology Council, its Greenhouse Science Advisory Committee and various Academy of Sciences' National Committees.
Most recently the Director of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation's Institute for Nuclear Geophysiology, she was previously Deputy Vice Chancellor at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Director of the Climatic Impacts Centre at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia where she continues to hold an Australian Research Council Professorial Fellowship.
Professor Bruce Hewitson (Speaker)
Bruce Hewitson is Professor of Climatology at the University of Cape Town. He obtained his PhD from Penn State University in 1991 and has been instrumental in developing a strong climate change research capacity in South Africa. Professor Hewitson was a coordinating lead author for the regional projections chapter in the both of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change Third and Fourth Assessment Reports. His main interests are the development of methodologies for regional scale climate change projections, and developing the use of climate modelling within Africa to explore sub-equatorial climate processes in Africa, in particular issues related to Africa land-use / land cover. The research has a strong focus on supporting the climate change needs within Africa. He participates in, as well as coordinates, a number of activities in climate change capacity development in Africa, including the development and dissemination of tailored regional projections to support the policy and adaptation communities.
Professor Brian Hoskins CBE FRS (Organsier and Chair)
Brian Hoskins is a Royal Society Research professor and Professor of Meteorology at the university of Reading. He is a mathematician by training and his research area is in weather and climate, in particular understanding atmospheric motion from the scale of fronts to that of the Earth. His international roles have included being vice-chair of the Joint Scientific Committee for the World Climate Research Programme and President of the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences. In the latest IPCC he is a Working Group 1 Review Editor and on the writing Team for both its Technical Summary and Summary for Policy Makers.
Professor Phil Jones (Speaker)
Director of the Climatic Research Unit, School of Environmental Sciences at UEA since 2004, where he has worked since 1976.
Sir David King FRS (Speaker)
Sir David King was appointed as the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Office of Science and Innovation in October 2000. Born in South Africa in 1939, and after an early career at the University of Witwatersrand, Imperial College and the University of East Anglia, he became the Brunner Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Liverpool in 1974. In 1988, he was appointed 1920 Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and subsequently became Master of Downing College (1995-2000), and Head of the University Chemistry Department (1993-2000). He retains his position at Cambridge University as Director of Research.
Professor Peter Lemke (Speaker)
Peter Lemke, professor of physics of atmosphere and ocean at the University of Bremen and head of the Climate Sciences Research Division at the Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research, received his PhD in meteorology from the University of Hamburg in 1980. He has 30 years of experience of working in climate, sea ice and atmospheric research. He has participated in seven polar expeditions with the German research icebreaker "Polarstern". On five expeditions he acted as chief scientist. His special interests are observation and modelling of high-latitude processes, especially the interaction between atmosphere, sea ice and ocean. He served on many national and international committees. Until 1999 he was a member of the Scientific Steering Group of the Arctic Climate System Study (ACSYS) of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) and the chairman of the ACSYS Numerical Experimentation Group which co-ordinated international atmosphere-sea ice-ocean modelling activities. From 1995 to 2006 he was a member of the Joint Scientific Committee for the World Climate Research Programme and served as its chair from 2000 to 2006. In 1991 he received the German Polar Meteorology Award (Georgi-Preis) and since 2005 he is an Honorable Professor of the China Meteorological Administration, Beijing. He is currently the Coordinating Lead Author for Chapter 4 (Observations: Snow, Ice and Frozen Ground) of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report to be published in 2007.
Dr Herve Le Treut (Speaker)
Hervé Le Treut is a former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and graduated from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie' in 1985. He is a senior scientist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and has been working on climate modelling within the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, of which he is currently the director. He has been involved in the IPCC as Lead Author (2001) or Convening Lead Author (2006)and is a member of the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme. He is also Professor at Ecole Polytechnique and member of the French Academy of Sciences.
Professor John Mitchell OBE FRS (Organsier and Chair)
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John Mitchell gained a BSc honours degree in Applied Mathematics in 1970; and a PhD, Theoretical Physics in 1973, both from The Queen's University, Belfast. He joined Meteorological Office in 1973 and in 1978, took charge of the Climate Change group in what is now the MetOffice's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. His main speciality is the study of the climatic effects of increases in greenhouse gases and related pollutants.
He been a lead author in the last three IPCC Working Group I reports. He is currently chairman of the WMO JSC/CLIVAR Working Group on Climate Modelling. In 1997 and 1998 he shared the Norbert Gerbier-Mumm Prize with other colleagues, and in 2004 received the Hans Oeschger medal from the European Geophysical Union. He was made a member of the Academia Europaea in 1998, and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2004.
He is currently Chief at the MetOffice, a member of NERC Council, a visiting Professor at the School of Maths, Meteorology and Physics, at the University of Reading, and an Honorary Professor of Environmental Science at the University of East Anglia.
Dr Carlos Nobre (Panel member)
Chair of IGBP Scientific Committee; Senior Scientist at the National Institute of Space Research (INPE), of Brazil; director of the Brazilian Center for Weather Forecasting and Climate Studies (CPTEC-INPE), 1991-2003; Program Scientist for the Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA), 1996-2002; Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and of the Academy of Sciences of the Developing Countries (TWAS); professor of Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions at
INPE's doctoral program in Meteorology; research interests in tropical meteorology, climate modeling, global environmental change, biosphere-atmosphere interactions in Amazonia.
Professor Jonathan Overpeck (Speaker)
Jonathan Overpeck is the Director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona, where he is also a Professor of Geosciences and a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences. He has a BA from Hamilton College (1979), as well as a MSc (1981) and PhD (1985) from Brown University. Jonathan Overpeck's specialty areas are: a) climate dynamics, including paleoclimatology, b) climate and ecosystem interaction, c) climate assessment, and d) environmental decision-support. He has on-going research programs in the Arctic, Western United States, South America, Africa and the Himalaya. Overpeck has written over 100 publications on climate and ecosystem variability. Prior to coming to Arizona, he held positions at Columbia University and then founded the NOAA Paleoclimatology Program, as well as the World Data Center for Paleoclimatology, before moving to the University of Arizona.
Overpeck is a Coordinating Lead Author for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment. He has been awarded the US Department of Commerce Bronze and Gold Medals, as well as the Walter Orr Roberts award of the American Meteorological Society for his interdisciplinary research. Overpeck was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to spend his sabbatical year (2005-6) investigating paleoenvironmental perspectives on the future, and was the 2005 American Geophysical Union Bjerknes Lecturer. He serves on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science Magazine.
Dr Tim Palmer FRS (Organiser and Chair)
Head of Division, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Lead Author IPCC Third Assessment Report. Co-Chair World Climate Research Programme CLIVAR international scientific steering group. Coordinator of two recent EU Climate Prediction Projects. Fellow of the Royal Society.
Professor John Pyle FRS (Organiser and Chair)
Professor Pyle obtained a BSc in Physics at Durham before moving to Oxford where he completed a DPhil in Atmospheric Physics, helping to develop a numerical model for stratospheric ozone studies. After a short period at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory he moved to Cambridge University in 1985 where since 2000 he has been Professor of Atmospheric Science. His research focuses on the numerical modelling of atmospheric chemistry. Problems involving the interaction between chemistry and climate have been addressed; these range from stratospheric ozone depletion to the changing tropospheric oxidizing capacity. He has played a major role in building an EU stratospheric research programme, coordinating several major field campaigns. He has contributed to all the WMO/UNEP assessments on stratospheric ozone since the early 1980s and is now a member of the steering committee. He was a convening lead author in the IPCC Special report "Safeguarding the ozone layer and the global climate system", published in 2006. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2004.
Dr Frank Raes (Panel member)
Dr Frank Raes studied physics and obtained his PhD at the University of Ghent (Belgium) and Post-doc at University of California Los Angeles. His main research area: role of aerosol particles in air pollution and climate change. He is a member of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), EUROTRAC-2 Scientific Steering Committee and Vice president of International Commission on Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution. Dr Raes has headed the Climate Change Unit since 1998.
Dr Susan Solomon (Speaker)
Susan Solomon is a Senior Scientist at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. She is widely recognized as one of the leaders in the field of atmospheric science. Since receiving her PhD degree in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in l98l, she has been employed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a research scientist. She made some of the first measurements in the Antarctic that showed that chlorofluorocarbons were responsible for the spectacular ozone hole, and she pioneered the theoretical understanding of the surface chemistry that causes it. Solomon Glacier (78°23'S, 162°30'E) and Solomon Saddle (78°23'S, 162°39'E) were named in honor of her leadership in Antarctic research in l994. In March of 2000, she received the National Medal of Science, the United States' highest scientific honor, and in 2004 she received the prestigious Blue Planet Prize both for pioneering research on the Antarctic ozone hole. Her current research focuses on chemistry/climate coupling. Since 2002, she has served as co-chair of Working Group 1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has been the leading source of authoritative scientific assessments on climate change since its inception in 1990.
Professor Thomas Stocker (Speaker)
Thomas Stocker is Professor of Climate and Environmental Physics at the University of Bern and head of the Division of Climate and Environmental Physics (staff of 50) of the Physics Institute since 1993. He obtained his PhD with distinction from ETH Zürich in 1987. After reserach positions at the University College (London), and McGill University (Montreal), he was appointed Associate Research Scientist at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University (New York) from 1991-1993.
Stocker's main research interest is the development of climate models and the investigation of past and future climate change combining models and paleoclimatic reconstructions using ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica. He developed the first climate models of intermediate complexity and investigates the role of the carbon cycle in the climate system, in particular, the impact of abrupt climate changes on the biogeochemical cycles.
Thomas Stocker has published over 110 papers in international refereed journals. He is a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science. Stocker served as a Coordinating Lead Author and contributor for the Third Assessment Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published in 2001, and coordinates the Chapter "Global Climate Projection" in the forthcoming Fourth Assessment Report of IPCC. Stocker was awarded the National Latsis Prize of the Swiss National Science Foundation in 1993 and a honorary doctorate of the University of Versailles (France) in 2006. He is also Member of the Academia Europaea, and a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Science and Literature, Mainz.
Dr Halldor Thorgeirsson (Panel member)
Halldor Thorgeirsson is Deputy Executive Secretary, Scientific and Technological Advice, of the Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn. He is responsible within the UNFCCC secretariat for support to the Convention Dialogue on long-term cooperative action and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA). He heads a cluster of three programmes dealing with Adaptation, Technology, Science, Clean Development Mechanism, Joint Implementation and Compliance.
Before joining the secretariat in 2004, he was Director of the Office of Sustainable Development and International Affairs at the Ministry for the Environment in Iceland. He was active in climate negotiations from 1997 and chaired the SBSTA for two years. He was active in the negotiations of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), and was involved with other international processes in the area of environment and sustainable development. He was President of the Preparatory Committee for the Development of a Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) from November 2003 until he joined the UNFCCC.
Halldor holds a PhD in physiological plant ecology from Utah State University and worked for ten years on research at the Agricultural Research Institute in Iceland. He was a member of the Icelandic Research Council and represented Iceland in regional and international cooperation on climate change research.
Professor Geraint Vaughan (Chair)
Geraint Vaughan graduated from Cambridge University in 1976, then joined a research branch of the Meteorological Office. This led to a DPhil in Atmospheric Physics at Oxford University, and in 1984 he joined the Physics Department at the University of Wales Aberystwyth where he spent the next 20 years teaching physics and researching into the ozone layer, stratosphere-troposphere exchange and tropospheric dynamics and composition. Professor Vaughan was appointed to a Chair in Atmospheric Science at the University of Manchester in 2005.
Dr Richard Wood (Speaker)
BA Mathematics Cambridge University, PhD Applied Mathematics Exeter University 1988. Lecturer in Applied Mathematics, Southampton University 1987-89. Climate Scientist, Met Office Hadley Centre 1989-present, specialising in modelling the role of the ocean in climate and climate change. Currently Head (Oceans and Climate). Lead Author, "Model Evaluation", IPCC WGI 3rd Assessment report. Coordinating Lead Author, "Climate Models and their Evaluation", IPCC WGI 4th Assessment report.
Dr Francis Zwiers (Speaker)
Dr Zwiers is the Director of the Climate Research Division of Environment Canada. He is recognized as a world leader in developing and implementing statistical tools for the study and prediction of climate change. Author of nearly 50 research papers in the past decade, he has also co-authored the chapter on the "Detection of climate change and attribution of causes" in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2001 Assessment Report. In addition, he has co-authored the textbook Statistical Analysis in Climate Research, considered to be the standard reference for the application of statistical methods in climate science.
Dr Zwiers is an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria and serves as a member or chairperson of numerous committees. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the American Meteorological Society, and has been the recipient of several awards which recognize his many achievements and dedication to excellence in the field of climate science.