Dr Penny Whetton is working to increase understanding of the potential impacts of climate change at the local and regional level in Australia and elsewhere.
Current activities
Dr Whetton has led the Climate Impacts and Risk research stream at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research since July 2005.
A major component of Dr Whetton’s research has been analysing the regional output of enhanced greenhouse general circulaton model (GCM) experiments, and using this information to construct regional scenarios of future climate change.
She also works on regional climate change impact assessment. She was the main contributor to, and editor of, the Climate Impact Group's Australian climate change projections released in November 1992, November 1996, and May 2001.
She is also contributing to new projections planned for release in October 2007.
Background
In September 1989, Dr Whetton became a Research Scientist in the Climate Impact Group with CSIRO Atmospheric Research. She became the Group Leader in March 1999.
Dr Whetton became Principal Research Scientist in July 1997, and Senior Principal Research Scientist in July 2005.
Dr Whetton has extensive experience in communicating her research to a broad audience, including:
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“Led by Dr Penny Whetton, the team of scientists are recognised as the best source of climate change information in Australia.”
Mr Brian Sherman, President of the Australian Museum
more than 150 presentations to audiences ranging from scientists to the general public
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frequent media contact, and often being quoted in media stories relating to climate change
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lecturing a course at the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, on climatology in 1992 and 1994
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presenting lectures on regional climate change assessment at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, in 1992 and for GCTE at Bogor, Indonesia
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more than 100 publications, including many documents aimed at non-scientists
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author of very widely distributed CSIRO climate change scenario documents.
Dr Whetton has expertise in:
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climate change
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regional climate change scenarios
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climate change impacts and integrated impact assessment
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climate variability including ENSO variability
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climate modelling
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palaeoclimate and proxy climate indicators
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statistical techniques as used in climate studies
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areas of climate impact, in particular, hydrology and snowcover.
Academic qualifications
Dr Whetton holds the following qualifications:
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a Bachelor of Science with Honours with a Physics major and an Honours year in Meteorology from the University of Melbourne, awarded in 1979
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a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Melbourne awarded in 1986. Her thesis was entitled A synoptic climatological analysis of Victorian rainfall variability and involved statistical analysis of the inter-relationship of Australian region rainfall, MSL pressure and sea surface temperature data sets.
Achievements
Dr Whetton was a contributor to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and a lead author of the regionalisation and climate scenarios chapters of the Working Group 1 component of the Third Assessment Report of IPCC.
She is currently a lead author of the regional projections chapter of the Working Group 1 component of the Fourth Assessment Report.
The Climate Impact Group was a recipient of the 2003 Eureka Prize for Environmental Research.
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