• Dr John Church
• Dr Neil White
• Dr John Hunter
• Dr Kathy McInnes
• Julian O'Grady
• Dr Mark Hemer
• Dr Catia Domingues
• Dr Didier Monselesan
• Ms Skye Platten

Dr John Church

John Church is an oceanographer with the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and has published across a broad range of topics in oceanography. His area of particular expertise is the role of the ocean in climate, particularly anthropogenic climate change. He is co-editor of a book "Ocean Circulation and Climate" published by Academic Press. He has been a Principal Investigator on NASA/CNES Topex/Poseidon and Jason Science Working Teams since 1987. He was co-convening lead author for the Chapter on Sea Level in the IPCC Third Assessment Report. He was Co-Chair of the international Scientific Steering Group for the World Ocean Circulation Experiment from 1994 to 1998, Chaired the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme from 2006 to 2008 and CoChaired the 2006 WCRP Understanding Sea-level Rise and Variability Workshop. He was awarded the 2006 Roger Revelle Medal by Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, was a winner of a CSIRO Medal for Research Achievement in 2006, won the 2007 Eureka Prize for Scientific Research and presented the 2008 AMOS R.H. Clarke Lecture.

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Dr Neil White

Neil White has been closely involved in both in situ and remotely sensed (especially satellite altimeter) oceanographic data since he joined the then fledgling CSIRO Division of Oceanography in 1983. He ran the data processing group for the RV Franklin Marine National Facility for 10 years and also acted as a Data Quality Expert for WOCE (the World Ocean Circulation Experiment). He started getting involved with satellite altimeter data with data from the GEOSAT Exact Repeat Mission in the late 1980s and has made significant contributions to data processing techniques and to calibration of the high quality satellites TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1. This work is continuing with Jason-2 (launched in 2008). He is also involved in research work using various types of sea level data, and has acted as an expert reviewer for the recent (AR4) IPCC report.

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Dr John Hunter

John Hunter works as an oceanographer at the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, which is based in the University of Tasmania. His current interests are the sea-level rise induced by climate change, and the response of Antarctic Ice Shelves to global warming. Recent work has involved investigations of sea level rise in Australia, the U.S., and in the Indian Ocean and Pacific regions, and the way in which this rise increases the frequency of extreme sea level events. He has recently completed estimates of future high sea level extremes for Australia, by combining the present exceedance statistics with projections of the (uncertain) sea level rise for the 21st century. The results are incorporated into a decision-support tool which is available on the WorldWide Web. Other interests are the numerical modelling of shelf, coastal and estuarine marine systems, and problems in applied marine science. In 1996 he was a joint recipient of the CSIRO Chairman's Medal for his work on the Port Phillip Bay Environmental Study.

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Dr Kathy McInnes

Dr Kathleen McInnes joined CSIRO in 1990. Her research interests are the impacts of climate change on the coast and her research in recent years has been the modelling of storm surges under current and future climate conditions. She has undertaken numerical modelling studies of tides, storm surges and coastal flooding in various locations such as Cairns, the Gold Coast, the Victorian coast, the NSW coast, Tasmania, Tuvalu, and Fiji. She was involved in two recently completed coastal vulnerability studies for the Sydney Coastal Councils and the Western Port Region. These studies applied integrated approaches to addressing climate vulnerability at the regional scale to assist councils in managing and adapting to the risks posed by climate change. She also has an ongoing interest in how severe weather events such as cold fronts, east coast lows and tropical cyclones may be affected by global warming. She has been a contributing author to the IPCC second, third and fourth assessment reports and more recently a lead author on an IPCC Special Report on Extremes.

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Julian O'Grady

Julian O'Grady joined CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research in mid 2006, since then he has been supporting research into extreme sea level. His worked has involved wave modelling and extreme value analysis to estimate the impact storms have had on coastlines in Australia and the Pacific and how they will change into the future.

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Dr Mark Hemer

Mark Hemer joined CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research in early 2006. His research interests span the physical processes which impact on the coastal, near-shore and continental shelf environments. Mark completed his PhD in 2003, looking at the oceanographic processes influencing sedimentation in contrasting environments: the wave-current dominated Torres Strait, and the less dynamic sub-ice-shelf cavity beneath the Amery ice shelf, East Antarctica. Prior to joining CSIRO, He was employed as a physical sedimentologist with the marine and coastal environment group of Geoscience Australia in Canberra. Mark's current research focuses on the response of ocean wind-waves to projected future climate scenarios, and the contribution of waves on potential coastal impacts.

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Dr Catia Domingues

Catia Domingues is a physical oceanographer with interests in sea level, ocean climate change, and the Earth's hydrological cycle. Since 2008, she has been a postdoctoral fellow with CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, investigating how natural (particularly violent volcanic explosions) and anthropogenic contributions have influenced changes in water masses, ocean currents, and sea level. Since 2005, as part of the CSIRO sea level group, she has been involved in using improved estimates of ocean warming to understand its contribution to sea-level rise. She also has ongoing collaborations with scientists at the Program for Climate Model Diagnostics and Intercomparison, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (USA) and the Met Office Hadley Centre (UK). Before becoming involved with global change research, she has contributed to understanding of the Leeuwin Current System & Indian Ocean circulation during her joint PhD at Flinders University/CSIRO, completed in 2006. She has experience with a diversity of ocean-related data sets: hydrography, current meter, satellite imagery as well as numerical output from general circulation models. She won a Fresh Scientist award in 2008 and the Eugene La Fond medal in 2007.

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Dr Didier Monselesan

Didier Monselesan joined CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, in 2008, where he is participating in the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research sea level studies and forecasting efforts. Didier started his Australian career at the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) in the Upper Atmosphere Physics group as an expeditioner wintering at Casey Station in 1993 and 1995. He pursued his interests in upper atmospheric physics at the Ionospheric Prediction Services (IPS) Radio and Space services in Sydney. His focus gradually shifted down from the upper atmosphere to mesospheric and stratospheric studies when rejoining the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition to work on the AAD LIDAR experiment at Davis Station from 2006 to 2008. On his return, he decided to take a plunge into the Ocean by joining the CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research laboratories in Hobart.

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Ms Skye Platten

Skye Platten joined CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research in 2009 where she is participating to the Pacific Climate Change Science Program and the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research. She is completing a PhD in statistical physics at the University of Adelaide, in which she modelled complex networks and processes occurring over them, such as the synchronisation of chaotic dynamics. Her current work focuses on using numerical modelling techiniques to determine the regional distribution of global sea level rise, especially as it applies to the Pacific Islands region.

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