BAMOS
Dec 2018
Announcements
Two new AMOS Fellows elected in
2018
On 7 December two new AMOS Fellows were announced: Associate Professor Todd Lane and Dr Penny Whetton.
Congratulations to our new Fellows! Brief descriptions of their careers and contributions are below.
Associate Professor Todd Lane Dr Penny Whetton
Todd Lane is Associate Professor and Reader in the School of
Earth Sciences at The University of Melbourne, and the Deputy
Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence
for Climate Extremes. Todd has made fundamental contributions
on topics related to very high resolution modelling of gravity
waves, clouds and turbulence. His work in this area has been
influential because it has changed the way in which the
discipline has thought about the generation of gravity waves
by convection, and his work now informs the way in which
these processes are parameterised in climate models. He has
also turned his attention to very high-resolution modelling of
extreme fire weather conditions and the dynamics of extreme
precipitation. Todd served the Society as AMOS President 2014–
16, and as Vice-President for the two years prior to that. After his
presidential term he continued on AMOS National Council and
served on the AMOS Awards Committee. Todd was awarded
the Anton Hales Medal by Australian Academy of Science for
distinguished research in the earth sciences. He has received
the Monthly Weather Review Editor’s Award, for excellence in
reviewing of papers for the Journal, is a past chair of the AMS
Expert Committee on Mesoscale Processes, and is a member
of the World Meteorological Organization’s Monsoon Panel
Expert Team on Severe Weather. He has supervised more than
18 postgraduate students. Dr Penny Whetton had a distinguished twenty five-year career
in CSIRO as an international leader in the science of regional
climate change projections until she retired in 2015. She
was very actively engaged in the communication of climate
change projections for Australia, leading to improved national
understanding of climate change. Penny continues to work
as an honorary Fellow in CSIRO and as an honorary Fellow at
the University of Melbourne. Penny’s research contributions
initially focussed on climate variability and circulation variations
associated with El Niño and links to rainfall and streamflow
variations in Australia and regions around the Pacific rim,
including China and the US, as well as effects on flow in the
Nile. After moving to CSIRO, her research focussed more on the
impacts of climate change and projections of future climate
change. She led the design and release of national climate
change projections for Australia by CSIRO in 1992, 1996 and
2001, and by CSIRO with the Bureau of Meteorology in 2007
and 2015. Penny has written more than 60 peer-reviewed
publications and 43 conference papers since joining CSIRO, as
well as more than 65 reports for clients in State and Federal
government, other government agencies and industry. She has
been very active as a Lead Author in multiple IPCC Assessment
Reports. The CSIRO Climate Impacts Group, that she led, was
awarded the 2003 Eureka Prize for Environmental Research.
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