Dr Michael Raupach, CSIRO Marine and Amospheric Research

Dr Michael Raupach: understanding continental and global environmental change

Dr Michael Raupach’s research investigates changes to climate and land systems resulting from the movement of water, heat, carbon and nutrients between land and atmosphere.

• 29 April 2011 | Updated 14 October 2011

Overview

• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications
• Achievements

Current activities

Dr Raupach leads the Continental Biogeochemical Cycles Research Team at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research.

His major research interests include:

• the global carbon cycle, especially the interactions between its natural dynamics and human influences
• global and continental change, especially the effects of climate and human land use on the terrestrial cycles of water, energy, carbon and nutrients
• biosphere-atmosphere interactions: the flows and stores of energy, water and carbon in landscapes, at local, continental and global scales
• model-data synthesis (the combination of models and data to enable each to 'learn' from the other) for applications in understanding global change and managing natural resources
• fluid mechanics of turbulent flows, especially over rough surfaces
• wind flows and the spread of windborne materials in the lower atmosphere, especially within vegetation canopies, over hills, around trees and windbreaks, and around bushfires
• soil erosion by wind, including studies of the windborne transport of solid particles, erosion control by vegetation, and wind erosion and long-term agricultural sustainability.

Background

Dr Raupach joined CSIRO, with the Centre for Environmental Mechanics, Canberra, Australia, in 1979 as a Research Scientist.

After a period overseas Dr Raupach returned to CSIRO and in 1991 became Program Leader, Atmospheric and Plant Processes with CSIRO's Centre for Environmental Mechanics in Canberra.

He held that position until 1997 and in 1996-97 served as Deputy Head of the Centre for Environmental Mechanics.

In 1997-98 he was the Program Leader of Environmental Processes and Resources at CSIRO Land and Water Division.

From 1998-2002 he worked as a Research Scientist, CSIRO Land and Water.

He was a Science Leader with the CSIRO Earth Observation Centre, 2002-05, and from 2005 to date he has worked as a Research Scientist with CSIRO's Marine and Atmospheric Research Division, including being Leader of the Continental Biogeochemical Cycles Team.

Dr Raupach was also a:

• Postdoctoral Research Fellow, at the Department of Meteorology, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, 1977-78
• Visiting Lecturer, with the Department of Meteorology, at the University of Reading, England in 1986
• Research Fellow, with the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, at the University of Cambridge, England, 1986-87.

  Since 2001 Dr Raupach has been Co-chair of the Global Carbon Project (GCP), a joint international project on the global carbon cycle sponsored by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Research (IHDP), and the World Climate Research Program.

Academic qualifications

Dr Raupach has been awarded a:

• Bachelor of Science with Honours from the University of Adelaide, South Australia, in 1971
• Doctor of Philosophy from Flinders University of South Australia, in 1976.

Dr Raupach's doctoral thesis was titled Atmospheric flux measurement by eddy correlation.

Achievements

Dr Raupach's achievements include:

• CSIRO Fellow, 2010
• Fellow, American Geophysical Union, 2010
• Fellow, Australian Academy of Science, 2009
• Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, 2002
• Distinguished Alumni Award, Flinders University of South Australia, 2010
• ScienceWatch Highly Cited Paper (Raupach et al. 2007. Global and regional drivers of accelerating CO2 emissions, PNAS 104:10288-10293). Thomson Reuters Science Watch http://sciencewatch.com/dr/erf/2010/10feberf/10feberfRaup/ [external link]
• Phillips Prize for Physics (1968, 1969, 1970).

His membership of international scientific committees and reviews include:

• Member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Core Project on Biospheric Aspects of the Hydrological Cycle (BAHC) of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP), 1991-96
• Science Panel Member, International Satellite-Land Surface Comparison Program (ISLSCP), 1992-94
• Member of the Australian Academy of Sciences Committee for IGBP, 1993-96
• Member, Australian Committee for GCOS (Global Climate Observation System), 1996-98
• Convenor, CSIRO Biosphere Working Group, 1999-current
• Co-chair, Global Carbon Project (GCP), a joint international project on the global carbon cycle sponsored by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Research (IHDP), and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), 2001-current
• Invited external reviewer for CarboEurope First Year Review, 2005
• Contributing Author, IPCC Fourth Assessment, Working Group 1, 2005-07
• Chair, Expert Working Group on 'Challenges at the Intersection of Carbon, Energy and Water', Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council and Office of the Chief Scientist, Australia, 2010
• Co-chair, Working Group to draft The Science of Climate Change: Questions and Answers (Australian Academy of Science publication on climate change for the general public), 2010.

Dr Raupach has also:

• held editorial roles on international scientific journals and books
• led numerous consultancies within Australia
• authored or co-authored of more than 130 papers in international scientific journals and over 100 conference papers and technical reports
• co-edited a textbook on the carbon-climate-human system.

He is also a contributing author of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Working Group 1 report in 2007.

Find out more about our work on Understanding Climate Change.