Ted Shepherd obtained a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Toronto in 1979, and a Ph.D. in Meteorology from MIT in 1984 (working under the supervision of Jule Charney and Peter Rhines). After a postdoctoral fellowship with Michael McIntyre at DAMTP, University of Cambridge, he took up a faculty position in the Department of Physics at the University of Toronto in 1988. He was promoted to associate professor in 1993 and to full professor in 1996. From 2005-2010 he served as the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies in Physics. In 2012 he moved to the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading, UK, to take up the Grantham Chair in Climate Science.


In the early part of his career Shepherd pioneered the application of Hamiltonian dynamics to geophysical fluid dynamics. Subsequently he turned his attention to the dynamics of the Earth’s middle atmosphere (stratosphere and mesosphere), where he became a leading authority on middle atmosphere dynamics and climate modelling, and chemistry-climate interactions. In this capacity he led, for 20 years, the highly successful university-government collaboration to develop and use the Canadian Middle Atmosphere Model (CMAM), creating an entirely new research community in Canada. The CMAM achieved a number of notable firsts, and was widely regarded as one of the leading chemistry-climate models in the world. Since moving to Reading in 2012, Shepherd has been tackling the issue of developing a more robust physical understanding of the atmospheric circulation response to climate change, and won a prestigious Advanced Grant from the European Research Council in support of this work. This work led to a novel ‘storyline’ approach to the representation of uncertainty for risk analysis.


Shepherd co-chaired the Scientific Steering Group of the World Climate Research Programme’s SPARC Core Project, in which he was active for over 20 years. He has also played key roles in the WMO/UNEP Ozone Assessments of 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014, as well as the IPCC/TEAP Special Report on Ozone and Climate (2005), and was a Review Editor for the IPCC AR5. For five years (2001 through 2005) he was the Chief Editor of the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, the leading journal in fundamental atmospheric science. He has won the top awards of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (President’s Prize, 1995) and the Meteorological Service of Canada (Patterson Medal, 2005), and is a Fellow of the CMOS, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the Royal Society of Canada, and the Royal Society. In 2014 he was honoured as a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher.


Research Awards and Honours


• 1985-1988: Research Fellow, St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge University

  1. •1995-1997: E.W.R. Steacie Fellow, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council

  2. •1995: President’s Prize, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society

• 2005: Elected Fellow, American Meteorological Society

• 2005: Elected Fellow, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society

• 2005: Patterson Medal, Meteorological Service of Canada, Environment Canada

• 2007: Elected Fellow, Royal Society of Canada

  1. •2008-2012: Fellow, Trinity College, University of Toronto

  2. •2010: Elected Fellow, American Geophysical Union

  3. •2012-2017: Wolfson Research Merit Award, Royal Society

  4. •2014-2020: Advanced Grant, European Research Council

  5. •2014: Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher in Geosciences

  6. •2016: Elected Fellow, Royal Society


Significant Responsibilities


  1. •1992-2012: Principal Investigator, Canadian MAM, GCC, C-SPARC and CMAM20 Projects

  2. •1994-2004: Member, SPARC Scientific Steering Group, World Climate Research Programme

  3. •Chapter Lead Author (with A.R. Ravishankara), 1998 WMO/UNEP Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion; Chapter 7: Lower Stratospheric Processes

  4. •1999-2005: Editor (Chief Editor from 2001), Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences

  5. •Coordinating Lead Author (with J.A. Pyle), 2005 IPCC/TEAP Special Report on Safeguarding the Ozone Layer and the Global Climate System (SROC); Chapter 1: Ozone and Climate: A Review of Interconnections

  6. •Steering Committee, 2006 WMO/UNEP Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion

  7. •Scientific Review and Advisory Group (with M.K.W. Ko and S. Solomon), 2010 WMO/UNEP Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion

  8. •2007-2012: Co-Chair (with T. Peter and subsequently G. Bodeker), SPARC Scientific Steering Group, World Climate Research Programme

  9. •2007-2011: Member, Earth Science Advisory Committee, European Space Agency

  10. •2008-2013: Review Editor, IPCC WG1 Fifth Assessment Report; Chapter 11: Near-Term Climate Change: Projections and Predictability

  11. •Steering Committee, 2014 WMO/UNEP Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion

  12. •2014-2016: Member, Science Review Group, Met Office Hadley Centre

  13. •2015-2016: Member, Committee on Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change Attribution, http://www.nasonline.org/

  14. •2017-2021: Chair, Science Review Group, Met Office Hadley Centre

 

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