Tim NAISH

Professor Tim Naish was appointed as a member of the WCRP Joint Scientific Committee (JSC) in 2023. He was appointed as leader fo the WCRP Grand Challenge on Melting Ice and Global Consequences in 2019.

Tim was Director of the Antarctic Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, for ten years, until 2017, when he took up a Royal Society of New Zealand James Cook Fellowship. He is currently a Professor in Earth Sciences and seconded part-time to Antarctica New Zealand where he leads the “Ice-Ocean-Atmosphere National Research Programme”. He has made 13 scientific expeditions to Antarctica, where he and his colleagues have made fundamental discoveries of how the Antarctic ice sheet responded to past climate change. His present research focuses on contemporary climate change with specific emphasis on contribution of the polar ice sheets and global sea-level change and improving sea-level projections. He is a committed communicator on Antarctic and  climate science issues, such as the consequences and impacts globally and for New Zealand. Tim was a Lead Author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5^th Assessment Report. He serves on a number of international science organizing and governmental advisory committees, including the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research’s (SCAR) and the Australian governments National Climate Science Advisory Committee. He also co-leads a large multidisciplinary research programme “Our Changing Coast”, which is providing location-specific estimates for future sea-level rise on the NZ coastline for an improved understanding of impact, hazard and risk. His “Melting Ice & Rising Seas Team” won the 2019 New Zealand Prime Minsters Science Prize. Tim has also received the New Zealand Antarctic Medal, the SCAR Tinker Muse Prize for Antarctic Science and Policy and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.