Professor Steven Sherwood
(FL150100035)
Current Organisation
Administering Organisation
Primary research field
The University of New South Wales
The University of New South Wales
Cloud Physics
Image credit: The University
of New South Wales
Fellowship project summary:
Revisiting the physics of clouds
This fellowship project aims to bring new rigour to climate modelling by improving our understanding of
key phenomena like clouds and storms. Earth’s climate has taken a number of turns in the recent and
geologic past that so far cannot be reproduced in models. Clouds and atmospheric turbulence are also a
problem for weather and climate prediction, the conceptual understanding of which now has evident flaws.
The hypothesis of this project is that these two problems are strongly linked, and that this link may be
exploited to solve problems across disciplines. This project aims to systematically re-evaluate our
conceptual understanding of cloud physics, and investigate how this affects our understanding of climate
phenomena in Earth’s past and future.
About Professor Sherwood
Professor Sherwood’s study interests include how the various processes in the atmosphere conspire to
establish climate, how these processes might be expected to control the way climate changes, and how the
atmosphere will ultimately interact with the oceans and other components of Earth.
Professor Sherwood received his Bachelor degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in 1987. He was awarded a Master of Science in Engineering Physics from the University of
California in 1991 and a PhD in Oceanography from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, University of
California in 1995.
Moving to Australia at the beginning of 2009 as Director of the Climate Change Research Centre at The
University of New South Wales (UNSW), he is now a Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence
for Climate Systems Science at UNSW.
Awards received throughout Professor Sherwood’s career include the 2002 National Science Foundation
CAREER award and the 2005 American Meteorological Association’s Clarence Leroy Meisinger
award. Professor Sherwood has co-authored over 70 papers published in peer-reviewed journals. His 2005
paper in Science on atmospheric warming was named as one of the top 100 scientific discoveries of the
year by Discover magazine.
Find out more about Professor Sherwood and his research by visiting his profile page on the ARC Centre
of Excellence for Climate System Science website.
For further information about this funding scheme please visit the Australian Laureate Fellowships scheme
page on the ARC website.