Kevin Trenberth

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Kevin Trenberth
Climate change attribution

Reanalysis
Diagram showing the Earth's energy balance[1]
AwardsRoger Revelle Medal (2017)
University of Illinois
  • National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
  • University of Auckland
    • ThesisDynamic coupling of the stratosphere with the troposphere and sudden stratospheric warmings. (1972)
    Doctoral advisorEdward Norton Lorenz

    Kevin Edward Trenberth

    climate scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).[2][3] He was a lead author of the 1995, 2001 and 2007 IPCC assessment reports. He also played major roles in the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), for example in its Tropical Oceans Global Atmosphere program (TOGA), the Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) program, and the Global Energy and Water Exchanges
    (GEWEX) project.

    Trenberth has published many publications (634 publications, four videos, and many blogs and podcasts as of November 2023).[3] In addition, his work is also highly cited by other scientists which is shown by his h-index of 136 (136 papers have over 136 citations) in 2023.[4]

    Trenberth received the 2017

    Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to geophysics.[6]

    Trenberth has New Zealand and U.S. citizenship.

    Early life and education

    Trenberth was born in

    BSc (Hons) with first-class honours in 1966.[10]

    After completing his studies at Canterbury, Trenberth worked at the

    ScD thesis, supervised by Edward Norton Lorenz and completed in 1972, was titled Dynamic coupling of the stratosphere with the troposphere and sudden stratospheric warmings.[12]

    Career

    Trenberth returned to the Meteorological Service in

    University of Illinois in 1977 where he became a full professor and worked there for nearly seven years.[13]: 34–36  After that, he joined the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in 1984.[14][7][13]
    : 84–90  His career at NCAR was in the Climate Analysis Section, where he was the Head for many years.

    He became a high level emeritus at NCAR as a Distinguished Scholar in 2019 and he moved back to New Zealand where he is also an honorary affiliated faculty at the University of Auckland.[13]: 128 

    He has been prominent in most of the IPCC assessment reports[13]: 70–83  and has also extensively served the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) in numerous ways.[13]: 65–70  He has also served on many U.S. national committees.[13]: 62–63  He served as editor of several journals.[13]: 2 

    Research activities

    Trenberth played a key role in the

    El Niño-Southern Oscillation.[15]

    Storms and hurricanes

    See also: Tropical cyclones and climate change

    Trenberth began some fundamental work related to changes in extremes with climate change in 1998. Until then, the focus of the scientific community had been mainly on changes in average temperatures and precipitation. Trenberth pointed out that the intermittent nature of precipitation mandated attention to intensity, frequency, duration, and type as well as amount.[16] All storms reach out and gather in the available water vapor, which fuels the storm. Therefore, increases in water vapor in the atmosphere with higher temperatures will lead to greater intensity but less frequency of storms. This is because the total amount of water vapor is controlled by surface evaporation, not temperature.[16][17] The prospects are therefore for more severe storms.  

    Until 2004, little attention had been paid to

    natural climate variability. Trenberth participated in a tele-news conference, set up by Harvard University, and cautiously suggested that global warming was undoubtedly playing some role.[13]: 75  This led to a major outcry from some hurricane meteorologists, and extensive criticism for example by Christopher Landsea, an American meteorologist.[18]
     

    As a response, Trenberth published further research on this topic in mid 2005.

    Peter Webster.[21]  Further details on natural variability were provided in a publication by Kevin Trenberth and Dennis J. Shea in 2006.[22] Trenberth further explained the concept to a broader audience in an article on hurricanes and climate change in Scientific American in 2007.[23]
    It has the short and snappy title: "Warmer Oceans, Stronger Hurricanes".

    Short-term climate variability

    See also: El Niño–Southern Oscillation

    In a 2013 scientific paper in

    El Niño. Despite this, ocean warming had continued below the 700 m depth.[24]

    In a second 2013 paper, Trenberth and Fasullo discussed the effect of the 1999 change from a positive to negative phase of the

    Pacific Decadal Oscillation. This was associated with a change of surface winds over the Pacific which had caused ocean heat to penetrate below 700m depth and had contributed to the apparent global warming hiatus in surface temperatures during the previous decade.[25]

    In an interview, Trenberth said, "The planet is warming", but "the warmth just isn't being manifested at the surface." He said his research showed that there had been a significant increase in deep ocean absorption of heat, particularly after 1998.[26] He told Nature that "The 1997 to '98 El Niño event was a trigger for the changes in the Pacific, and I think that's very probably the beginning of the hiatus". He said that, eventually, "it will switch back in the other direction."[27] Trenberth's explanation attracted wide attention in the press.[27][28][29]

    Hacked e-mail controversy in 2009

    Kevin Trenberth was "one of the victims in “Climategate” where hacked emails from climate scientists were distorted by climate-change deniers to sow confusion."[30] In the Climatic Research Unit email controversy, an unlawfully disclosed email from Trenberth about one of his publications from 2009 was widely misrepresented; he had written, "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." In that 2009 paper, "An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth's global energy",[31] Trenberth had discussed the distribution of heat and how it was affected by climate forcing, including greenhouse gas changes. This could be tracked from 1993 to 2003, but for the period from 2004 to 2008 it was not then possible to explain the relatively cool temperatures of 2008.

    Trenberth has stated later: "It is amazing to see this particular quote lambasted so often. It stems from a paper I published this year bemoaning our inability to effectively monitor the energy flows associated with short-term climate variability. It is quite clear from the paper that I was not questioning the link between

    warming, or even suggesting that recent temperatures are unusual in the context of short-term natural variability."[32]

    Public stance on climate change

    For decades, Kevin Trenberth has been outspoken about climate change and the urgency to take action. One of his key messages has been: "It’s real, the problem is cumulative, and we’re causing it. Today’s blanket of greenhouse gases would disperse only over centuries. Cutting emissions is the most important of all possible responses."[30] And "we also have to build resilience to the new extremes".[30]

    Honours and awards

    Trenberth was appointed Distinguished Scholar at NCAR in 2020. He is also an honorary faculty member in the Physics Department at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.[30]

    Trenberth is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the American Association for Advancement of Science, and the American Geophysical Union; and an honorary fellow of the

    Royal Society of New Zealand
    .

    In 2000 he received the

    Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water, and the Climate Communication Prize from American Geophysical Union.[33]

    Trenberth received the 2017 Roger Revelle Medal[5] from the American Geophysical Union for his work on climate change issues.

    In January 2022 he was celebrated in a one-day Kevin Trenberth Symposium by the American Meteorological Society.[34][13]: 125 

    In the

    Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to geophysics.[6]

    Publications

    According to his staff page at NCAR: "Kevin Trenberth's total number of publications (as of November 2023) is 75 books or book chapters, 298 journal articles, 23 Technical Notes, 117 proceedings or preprints, and 87 other articles, plus four videos, for a total of 634 publications plus 4 videos, and many blogs and podcasts. On the Web of Science, there are 55,523 citations and an H index of 104 (104 publications have 104 or more citations). On Google Scholar, there are more than 132,000 citations and an H index of 136 (or 885 since 2018)."[4][3]

    Furthermore, according to his staff page: "From 1996 until 2017 he ranked first in the number of highly cited papers published out of all 223,246 published environmental scientists."[35][3]

    He has also written numerous articles for the general public,[30] for example in The Conversation[36] and New Zealand's Newsroom.[37]

    Selected books

    • 2023: Trenberth, K. E. (2023). A Personal Tale of the Development of Climate Science: The Life and Times of Kevin Trenberth, Auckland: Kevin E. Trenberth
    • 2022 : The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate System Cambridge University Press
      ISBN 978-1108979030
    • 2000 : (in collaboration with K. A. Miller, L. O. Mearns and S. Rhodes) "Effects of Changing Climate on Weather and Human Activities" University Science Books / University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR)
      ISBN 978-1891389146
    • 1993 : (editor) Climate System Modeling Cambridge University Press
      ISBN 978-0521128377

    See also

    References

    1. ^ "FAQ 1.1 Fig 1 – Estimate of the Earth's annual and global mean energy balance" (PDF), IPCC AR4 WG I (PDF), IPCC, 2007, p. 96, archived from the original on 26 November 2018, retrieved 24 July 2009
    2. ISBN 978-0-85265-229-9
      , p. XII–XIII.
    3. ^ a b c d "CAS People - Kevin Trenberth". www2.cgd.ucar.edu. Retrieved 22 December 2023.
    4. ^ a b "Kevin E Trenberth". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 22 December 2023.
    5. ^ a b A profile of award-winning climate scientist Kevin Trenberth, by John Abraham, The Guardian, 27 July 2017
    6. ^ a b "New Year Honours 2024: the full list". The New Zealand Herald. 30 December 2023. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
    7. ^ a b "Vita – Kevin E. Trenberth" (PDF). University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. November 2022. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
    8. PapersPast
      .
    9. ^
      PapersPast
      .
    10. PapersPast
      .
    11. PapersPast
      .
    12. ^ Trenberth, Kevin E. (1972). Dynamic coupling of the stratosphere with the troposphere and sudden stratospheric warmings (ScD thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
    13. ^
      ISBN 978-0-473-68694-9
      .
    14. PapersPast
      .
    15. ^ "The Weather Factory: El Nino and Global Warming". PBS. Archived from the original on 11 May 2015. Retrieved 2 September 2017.
    16. ^
      doi:10.1023/A:1005319109110
      .
    17. ISSN 0003-0007
      .
    18. ^ "CAS People | Kevin Trenberth | Landsea". www2.cgd.ucar.edu. Retrieved 22 December 2023.
    19. ISSN 0036-8075
      .
    20. ISSN 0028-0836
      .
    21. ISSN 0036-8075
      .
    22. ISSN 0094-8276
      .
    23. ISSN 0036-8733
      .
    24. ^ Distinctive climate signals in reanalysis of global ocean heat content, by Magdalena Balmaseda, Kevin Trenberth, Erland Kallen. Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 40, Issue 9, pages 1754–1759, 16 May 2013. Full text online
    25. doi:10.1002/2013EF000165
      .
    26. ^ Global Warming 'Pause' Isn't What Climate Change Skeptics Say It Is Archived 7 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine by Terrell Johnson, The Weather Channel, 13 January 2014
    27. ^ a b Climate change: The case of the missing heat, Nature (journal), 15 January 2014
    28. ^ Oceans continue to warm, especially the deeps, Ars Technica, 1 April 2013
    29. ^ Mystery of the 'Missing' Global Warming , Bloomberg News, 23 October 2013
    30. ^ a b c d e "Kevin Trenberth: communicating climate science with urgency - The University of Auckland". www.auckland.ac.nz. Retrieved 30 January 2024.
    31. doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001
      .
    32. ^ Kevin Trenberth on Hacking of Climate Files and "Climategate"
    33. ^ AGU Climate Communication Prize
    34. ^ "Kevin E. Trenberth Symposium". 2021 AMS Annual Meeting. Retrieved 30 January 2024.
    35. PMID 31404057
      .
    36. ^ "Kevin Trenberth". The Conversation. 28 October 2012. Retrieved 30 January 2024.
    37. ^ Trenberth, Kevin (20 September 2023). "Beyond recycling, what to do about climate change?". Newsroom. Retrieved 30 January 2024.

    External links

    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kevin_Trenberth&oldid=1216768443"