Prof Scott Power

Biography

Prof Scott Power is the Director for the Centre for Applied Climate Sciences at the University of Southern Queensland. Previously Scott was an Adjunct Professor in the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash University, and a former Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland and Senior Principal Research Scientist in the Bureau of Meteorology. He was an author of the Fifth IPCC WGI-III Synthesis Report that informed the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. Scott is the former head of climate research and operational climate monitoring and prediction, and the former International Development Manager in the Bureau of Meteorology, and the acting head of Australia’s National Climate Centre. He previously coordinated the Bureau's participation in the Australian Climate Change Science Program, he initiated and led the development of the first Australian Government-funded regional climate program (to enhance climate prediction services in numerous Pacific Island countries; now called COSPPac). He was the Bureau-lead for the development of a program on Pacific climate science that assisted 14 vulnerable countries in the Pacific and Timor-Leste adapt to climate change and, more recently, he initiated and co-managed a DFAT-funded “Disaster Ready” project, with World Vision and the Solomon Islands Meteorological Service, to increase community benefits from, e.g., severe weather warnings. Scott has published extensively in the international scientific literature on Pacific climate, climate variability and extremes, climate change, El Niño, decade-to-decade climate variability and long-term changes in severe weather. He was a member of, e.g., the CLIVAR Pacific Ocean Panel, the World Climate Research Program’s Task Team for the Decadal Climate Prediction Grand Challenge, the American Meteorological Society’s Committee for Southern Hemisphere Oceanography and Meteorology and the CLIVAR Decadal Climate Variability and Predictability Research Focus Group.