Gavin A. Schmidt is a

climatologist Climatology (from Greek , ''klima'', "place, zone"; and , ''-logia'') or climate science is the scientific study of Earth's climate, typically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of at least 30 years. This modern field of study ...

, climate modeler and Director of the

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

Goddard Institute for Space Studies The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) is a laboratory in the Earth Sciences Division of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center affiliated with the Columbia University Earth Institute. The institute is located at Columbia University in N ...

(GISS) in New York, and co-founder of the award-winning climate science blog

RealClimate ''RealClimate'' is a commentary site (blog) on climatology. The site's contributors include climate scientists whose goal is to provide a response to developing stories and a context they feel is sometimes missing in mainstream commentary o ...

Work

He was educated at The Corsham School, earned a BA (Hons) in mathematics at

Jesus College, Oxford Jesus College (in full: Jesus College in the University of Oxford of Queen Elizabeth's Foundation) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is in the centre of the city, on a site between Turl Street, Ship S ...

, and a PhD in applied mathematics at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

. Schmidt worked on the variability of the ocean circulation and

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologi ...

, using general circulation models (GCMs). He has also worked on ways to reconcile paleo-data with models. He helped develop the GISS

ocean The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth and contains 97% of Earth's water. An ocean can also refer to any of the large bodies of water into which the wo ...

and coupled GCMs to improve the representation of the present day climate, while investigating their response to

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 ...

. NASA named Schmidt to head GISS in June 2014. He stepped into the position left vacant after the retirement of long-time director James E. Hansen, becoming the third person to hold the post. In an interview with Science News, Schmidt said that he wanted to continue the institute's work on climate modeling and to expand its work on climate impacts and astrobiology.

Research

His main research interest is climate variability, both its internal and the response to

, investigated via ocean-atmosphere general circulation models. He also uses these to study palaeoclimate by working on methods to compare palaeo-data with model output. Schmidt helps to develop the

GISS The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) is a laboratory in the Earth Sciences Division of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center affiliated with the Columbia University Earth Institute. The institute is located at Columbia University in ...

ocean and coupled GCMs (ModelE). This model has been "isotopically enabled" to carry

oxygen-18 Oxygen-18 (, Ω) is a natural, stable isotope of oxygen and one of the environmental isotopes. is an important precursor for the production of fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) used in positron emission tomography (PET). Generally, in the radiopharmaceu ...

tracers, allowing the model to simulate the pattern of δ¹⁸O observed in ice cores, cave records and ocean sediments.

Media and outreach

Schmidt has appeared on various occasions in the media, often he is asked about his expertise on climate related study findings, current events or gives lectures. Schmidt worked with the American Museum of Natural History, the College de France, and the

New York Academy of Sciences The New York Academy of Sciences (originally the Lyceum of Natural History) was founded in January 1817 as the Lyceum of Natural History. It is the fourth oldest scientific society in the United States. An independent, nonprofit organization wi ...

for education and outreach. Schmidt and eight other colleagues founded in 2004 the

blog. The blog provides critical commentary on climate science with the scope on outreach to the public and for journalists. Additionally, the blog features frequent guest posts by experts in their field. Articles and commentary have defended scientific research against allegations made about the hockey stick graph. During the 2009-2010

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 ...

he strongly defended the scientists involved, including Michael E. Mann and Phil Jones. Journalist

Fred Pearce Fred Pearce (born 30 December 1951) is an English science writer and public speaker based in London. He reports on the environment, popular science and development issues. He specialises in global environmental issues, including water and clim ...

noted, "''Schmidt wrote that the emails merely showed how scientists interact in private''", and that "''Gravity isn't a useful theory because Newton was a nice man.''" Schmidt was ''EarthSky Science Communicator of the Year'' in 2011.

Awards

In October 2011, the

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 a ...

awarded Schmidt the inaugural ''Climate Communications Prize'', for his work on communicating climate-change issues to the public. The award news release noted his outreach work including co-founding and contributing to the

blog. He was a contributing author of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); the work of the IPCC, including the contributions of many scientists, was recognised by the joint award of the

2007 Nobel Peace Prize The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (founded in 1988) and Al Gore (b. 1948) "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made clima ...

. Schmidt was named in November 2004 as one of

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it ...

's "Top 50 Research Leaders" of the year.

Publications

Schmidt has published over 100 studies in peer-reviewed journals such as ''

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of Sci ...

'', ''

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

'', and ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the 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. Although humans are ...

'', on various climate related topics. He is the co-author, with Joshua Wolfe, of ''Climate Change: Picturing the Science'' (2009), which has a foreword by Jeffrey D. Sachs. The book combines images of the

effects of climate change The effects of climate change impact the physical environment, ecosystems and human societies. The environmental effects of climate change are broad and far-reaching. They affect the water cycle, oceans, sea and land ice ( glaciers), sea le ...

with scientific explanations.

Selected publications

* Lenssen, Nathan J. L., Gavin A. Schmidt, James E. Hansen, Matthew J. Menne, Avraham Persin, Reto Ruedy, and Daniel Zyss (2019)
"Improvements in the GISTEMP Uncertainty Model,"
''Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres'', 214(12), pp. 6307-6326. * * * * * *

References

External links

Gavin Schmidt's homepage at NASA GISSRealClimate
* ** (2014) {{DEFAULTSORT:Schmidt, Gavin British climatologists Alumni of Jesus College, Oxford Alumni of University College London Living people Environmental bloggers Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change contributing authors NASA people British expatriate academics in the United States Science bloggers Atmospheric physicists Year of birth missing (living people) Climate communication