Brief Biographical Sketch

Dr. Kevin Trenberth is Head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO. From New Zealand, he completed a first class honours degree in mathematics at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and obtained his Sc. D. in meteorology in 1972 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Following several years in the New Zealand Meteorological Service, he joined the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois and became a full Professor in 1984, before moving to NCAR in 1984.

He was named a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in 1985, the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1994, the American Geophysical Union in 2006 and an Honorary Fellow of the New Zealand Royal Society in 1995. In 2000 he received the Jule G. Charney award from the AMS and in 2003 he was given the NCAR Distinguished Achievement Award. He has served as an editor and associate editor for several professional journals. He edited a 788 page book Climate System Modeling (1992). He has published over 400 scientific articles or papers, including 40 books or book chapters, and over 175 refereed journal articles and has given many invited scientific talks as well as appearing in a number of television, radio programs and newspaper articles.

Trenberth has served on a number of national and international advisory committees and panels including many panels, committees and a board of the National Academy of Sciences. Trenberth has been prominent in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Scientific Assessment activities, was a convening lead author for the 1995 Scientific Assessment and lead author for the 2001 assessment (including for the Technical Summary and Summary for Policy Makers) and is a coordinating lead author of the 2007 assessment. He has recently served as a member of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Working Group (from 1987 to 2006), and is a member of NOAA's Climate Observing System Council, and NOAA's Advisory Panel for Climate Change Data and Detection. He also recently served on the the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) from 1999 to 2006 and was an officer from 2003 to 2006, and he chairs the WCRP Observations and Assimilation Panel.

For more information, please see his Curriculum Vitae