Kevin E. Trenberth

Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth is a Distinguished Scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and an Honorary Academic, Department of Physics, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.

From Christchurch, New Zealand, his undergraduate degree was from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, B.Sc. (HONS First Class) in 1966 in just three years. This is normally a four-year degree, equivalent to a Masters, but without a thesis. He majored in Applied Mathematics. After a short bout in the army (Vietnam war years) he took a job at the New Zealand Meteorological Service in Wellington. He was trained as a forecaster and performed some field studies related to the siting of a power station, before winning a New Zealand Government Research Fellowship in 1968 to study and obtain his Sc. D. in meteorology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972. He returned to New Zealand with his new wife.

In 1977, Kevin took a position as Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, in Champaign-Urbana, and was promoted to full Professor in 1982. In 1984 he took a research position at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and remained as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Illinois for 3 years, while his Ph.D. students graduated. As a Senior Scientist at NCAR he became Head of the Climate Analysis Section in 1987, Deputy Director of the Climate and Global Dynamics Division from 1991-1995, and was appointed a Distinguished Scholar on retirement in 2020.

Kevin also served as Editor on Monthly Weather Review from 1981 to 1987 and helped initiate the Journal of Climate, where he was an Associate Editor from 1987 to 1995.

Kevin has extensively served the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) in numerous ways from 1989 to 2018. Following on from membership in the U.S. TOGA (Tropical Oceans Global Atmosphere) Panel from its initiation in 1995, in 1989, he became a member of the International TOGA scientific steering group (SSG) until the end of the program in 1995. He then became the first co-Chair of the international SSG of the CLIVAR (Climate Variability and Predictability) Programme 1995-1999, and a member of the WCRP Joint Scientific Committee (JSC) 1999-2006. He was an Officer from 2003-2006 (executive committee). He then chaired the WCRP Observations and Assimilation Panel (WOAP) 2004-2010, and also served as a member of the WCRP Modeling Panel (WMP). In 2007 he was appointed to the GEWEX SSG, which, as chair 2010-2013, he led the revamping and renaming of it to Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX). He continued on the SSG for another year and served as co-chair of the Seventh International Scientific Conference on the Global Water and Energy Cycle, which was held in The Hague, The Netherlands, in July 2014. He was then recruited to become co-chair of CONCEPT-HEAT (Consistency between planetary energy balance and ocean heat storage) under CLIVAR until 2018, when he stepped down. He has also served on many U.S. national committees, especially in NOAA.

Kevin has been very prominent in most of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientific assessments of Climate Change for Working Group I. In 1992 he was recruited to be the Convening Lead Author of Chapter 1 of the second scientific assessment report (SAR) of IPCC that came out in 1995. For the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), he was recruited as a Lead Author, this time for the chapter on climate processes, and then as the Coordinating Lead Author (CLA) of Chapter 3 on observations of the atmosphere and the surface for the Fourth Assessment (AR4) that came out in 2007. He continued as a Review Editor for AR5. He was involved in the intergovernmental meetings that approved the reports and the Summary for Policy Makers for the SAR, TAR and AR4. He also had some involvement with the Working Group II reports. Accordingly, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize that went to IPCC and Al Gore in 2007.

He is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the American Association for Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi. In 2000 he received the Jule G. Charney award from the AMS and in 2003 he was given the NCAR Distinguished Achievement Award. In 2013 he received the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water, joint with Aiguo Dai, and the AGU Climate Communication Prize, and in 2017 the AGU Revelle Medal.

Kevin edited a 788-page book Climate System Modeling, published in 1992 by Cambridge University Press. Another major book “The changing flow of energy through the climate system”, Cambridge University Press, 336 pp, is out in December 2021 (in the UK). He has published over 580 publications plus 4 videos; including 71 books or book chapters, and 288 journal articles, 16 reviewed contributions to The Conversation, and many other blogs. His research covers broad areas of climate science, with a focus on the global energy and water cycles, climate data analysis, ENSO, precipitation characteristics, extreme changes, and model evaluation. On the Web of Science, there are over 48,000 citations and an H index of 97 (97 publications have 97 or more citations). On Google Scholar, there are >108,000 citations and an H index of 126 (or 85 since 2015). From 1996 until 2017 he ranked first in the number of highly cited papers published out of all 223,246 published environmental scientists. “Trenberth” is one of the most cited names in climate journals and conferences of our time.

He has given many invited scientific talks as well as appearing in a number of television and radio programs, and newspaper articles. In his spare time, he plays golf. Learn more about Kevin at https://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/