Rate My Professor Scott Power

Scott Power is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash University. He is a climate scientist whose work examines climate variability and climate change, focusing on how natural variability and externally influenced change combine to shape observed climate and projections of future change. Over more than three decades, he has contributed to research on climate variability, climate change and extremes, particularly in the tropical Pacific and its influence on Australia and the broader Indo-Pacific region. This includes studies on the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, and their interactions with climate change, with publications appearing in journals such as Science, Nature, Nature Climate Change, Nature Geoscience, Nature Food, Climate Dynamics, and the Journal of Climate.

Power served as a Coordinating Lead Author for IPCC Working Group I and as a member of the Core Writing Team for the IPCC Synthesis Report that informed the Paris Agreement. He has held senior scientific leadership roles at Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, including head of climate change research and head of climate monitoring and prediction services, and was Director of the Centre for Applied Climate Sciences at the University of Southern Queensland. He has contributed to collaborative programs strengthening climate science capability and climate services in Pacific Island Countries, working with national meteorological services and regional organisations to support the use of climate information in managing droughts, floods and climate risk. He led the development of a project to enhance climate prediction services in numerous Pacific Island countries and co-led a program on Pacific climate change science that assisted 14 vulnerable countries in the Pacific and Timor-Leste. More recently, he was the Bureau lead on the development of the National Environmental Science Program's Earth System and Climate Change Hub and co-led the development of a DFAT-funded project to increase community benefits from Early Warning Systems in the Solomon Islands. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Applied Climate Sciences at the University of Southern Queensland.