Kevin Edward Trenberth (born 8 November 1944) is part of the Climate Analysis Section at the US NCAR

National Center for Atmospheric Research The US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR ) is a US federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) managed by the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and funded by the National Science Foundatio ...

. He was a lead author of the 2001 and 2007

IPCC The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Its job is to advance scientific knowledge about climate change caused by human activities. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) a ...

Scientific Assessment of Climate Change (see

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report ''Climate Change 2007'', the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was published in 2007 and is the fourth in a series of reports intended to assess scientific, technical and socio ...

) and serves on the Scientific Steering Group for the Climate Variability and Predictability ( CLIVAR) program. He chaired the WCRP Observation and Assimilation Panel from 2004 to 2010 and chaired the Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) scientific steering group from 2010 to 2013 (member 2007-14). In addition, he served on the Joint Scientific Committee of the

World Climate Research Programme The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) is an international programme that helps to coordinate global climate research. The WCRP was established in 1980, under the joint sponsorship of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Inter ...

, and has made significant contributions to research into

El Niño-Southern Oscillation EL, El or el may refer to: Religion * El (deity), a Semitic word for "God" People * EL (rapper) (born 1983), stage name of Elorm Adablah, a Ghanaian rapper and sound engineer * El DeBarge, music artist * El Franco Lee (1949–2016), American po ...

. Trenberth's work is highly cited and he has an

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as winn ...

of 100 (100 papers have over 100 citations).

Awards

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 Royal may refer to: People * Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name * A member of a royal family Places United States * Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Royal, Illinois, a village * Royal, Iowa, a cit ...

. In 2000 he received the Jule G. Charney award from the

American Meteorological Society The American Meteorological Society (AMS) is the premier scientific and professional organization in the United States promoting and disseminating information about the Atmospheric sciences, atmospheric, Oceanography, oceanic, and Hydrology, hydr ...

; in 2003 he was given the

NCAR The US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR ) is a US federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) managed by the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and funded by the National Science Foundatio ...

Distinguished Achievement Award; and in 2013 he was awarded the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water, and the Climate Communication Prize from

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists and enthusiasts that according to their website includes 130,000 people (not members). AGU's act ...

Short term climate variability

In a 2009 paper, "An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth's global energy", Trenberth discussed the distribution of heat and how it was affected by

climate forcing Earth's climate system is a complex system having five interacting components: the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (water), the cryosphere (ice and permafrost), the lithosphere (earth's upper rocky layer) and the biosphere (living things). ''C ...

, 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. In the

Climatic Research Unit email controversy The Climatic Research Unit email controversy (also known as "Climategate") began in November 2009 with the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) by an external attacker, copying thousa ...

, an unlawfully disclosed email from Trenberth about this paper was widely misrepresented; he wrote, "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." Trenberth has stated: "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

anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and larg ...

and

warming Warming may refer to: People *Eugenius Warming, (1841–1924), Danish botanist * Thomas Warming, (b. 1969), Danish illustrator, painter and author See also *Global warming *Warming up *Warming Land Warming Land is a peninsula in far northern G ...

, or even suggesting that recent temperatures are unusual in the context of short-term natural variability." In a 2013 scientific paper in ''

Geophysical Research Letters ''Geophysical Research Letters'' is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal of geoscience published by the American Geophysical Union that was established in 1974. The editor-in-chief is Harihar Rajaram. Aims and scope The journal aims for ra ...

'', Trenberth and co-authors presented an observation-based reanalysis of global ocean temperatures. This proposed that a recent hiatus in upper-ocean warming after 2004 had seen the long-term increase interrupted by sharp cooling events due to volcanic eruptions and

El Niño El Niño (; ; ) is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific (approximately between the International Date L ...

. Despite this, ocean warming had continued below the 700m depth. 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 The Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) is a robust, recurring pattern of ocean-atmosphere climate variability centered over the mid-latitude Pacific basin. The PDO is detected as warm or cool surface waters in the Pacific Ocean, north of 20°N. O ...

. 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 A global warming hiatus, also sometimes referred to as a global warming pause or a global warming slowdown, is a period of relatively little change in globally averaged surface temperatures. In the current episode of global warming many such 15 ...

in surface temperatures during the previous decade. 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. He told ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

'' 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."Climate change: The case of the missing heat

Nature (journal) ''Nature'' is a British weekly scientific journal founded and based in London, England. As a multidisciplinary publication, ''Nature'' features peer-reviewed research from a variety of academic disciplines, mainly in science and technology. ...

, 15 January 2014 Trenberth's explanation attracted wide attention in the press. Trenberth received the 2017

Roger Revelle Medal The Roger Revelle Medal is given out annually by the American Geophysical Union to recognize "outstanding accomplishments or contributions toward the understanding of the Earth’s atmospheric processes, including its dynamics, chemistry, and r ...

A profile of award-winning climate scientist Kevin Trenberth, by John Abraham
''The Guardian'', 27 July 2017 from the

for his work on climate change issues.

Publications

Books

* 2022 : The Changing Flow of Energy Through the Climate Syste
Cambridge University Press
* 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) * 1993 : (editor) ''Climate System Modelling'
Cambridge University Press

References

External links

Kevin E. Trenberth
at the

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) is a US nonprofit consortium of more than 100 colleges and universities providing research and training in the atmospheric and related sciences. UCAR manages the National Center for Atmosph ...

"How to Fix the Climate-Change Panel"
Questions for climate modeller and IPCC insider Kevin E. Trenberth,

IEEE Spectrum ''IEEE Spectrum'' is a magazine edited by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The first issue of ''IEEE Spectrum'' was published in January 1964 as a successor to ''Electrical Engineering''. The magazine contains peer-revie ...

, Oct. 2010.
"Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate"
by Trenberth and 37 co-signers,

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

, 1 February 2012
Reply to Trenberth et al.
by

Claude Allegre Claude may refer to: __NOTOC__ People and fictional characters * Claude (given name), a list of people and fictional characters * Claude (surname), a list of people * Claude Lorrain (c. 1600–1682), French landscape painter, draughtsman and etcher ...

et al., WSJ, 21 February 2012 {{DEFAULTSORT:Trenberth, Kevin E. Living people New Zealand climatologists Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead authors American people of New Zealand descent Fellows of the Royal Society of New Zealand 1944 births Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni People from Christchurch National Center for Atmospheric Research faculty Fellows of the American Meteorological Society Climate communication