Biography
Professor Jason Evans completed his undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics at Newcastle University in 1996 and was awarded his PhD in Environmental Management from the Australian National University in 2001. He then spent six years as a postdoctoral then research fellow at Yale University, in the US. In 2007 he returned to Australia to take up a position in the Climate Change Research Centre at UNSW, where he remains today.
Prof Evans' expertise is in the area of regional climate, land-atmosphere interactions, the water cycle and climate change. His focus is on regional climate change and its impacts. His research program brings together advanced modelling tools and extensive observational data sets, with an emphasis on satellite-based, remotely sensed earth observations. The research finds new and improved techniques to combine data with regional climate and land-surface models, to help solve problems of national and international significance.
Prof Evans is on the Scientific Advisory Team of the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX), an element of the World Climate Research Programme. He is also region coordinator of the CORDEX Australasia domain. He was Lead Author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems. He has also been a member of the editorial team of the Journal of Climate since 2016.
Prof Evans has been awarded an Australian Research Fellowship and a Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council. In 2008 he was awarded the Australian Agricultural Industries Young Innovators and Scientists Award by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and Land & Water Australia for his work on land-atmosphere coupling over irrigation districts. In 2015 he was awarded the President's Mid-career Plenary Lecture by the Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia and New Zealand in recognition of his contributions to modelling of the regional climate. In 2017 he was a Green Globe Sustainability Champion finalist for his work on regional-scale climate projections and adaptation. He was awarded the Australian Meteorology and Oceanography Society's Priestley Medal for mid-career excellence in climate and related sciences in 2017.
