Meteorological Society of New Zealand Kidson Medal Winner
Dr Kyle Clem was awarded this medal from the Meteorological Society of New Zealand for his recent paper “Record warming at the South Pole during the past three decades”. Kyle is a Research Fellow in the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Science at Victoria University of Wellington. Despite its very recent publication in June of this year, this paper has already caught the attention of the international media, including the New York Times and the Guardian, and been cited in several scientific articles. This is remarkable for a scientific paper about Antarctica, with a New Zealander as the lead author, who is also an early career scientist.
The paper was published in Nature Climate Change, a peer reviewed series that publishes cutting-edge international research on the nature, underlying causes and impacts of global climate change. Antarctica is the coldest, driest and windiest place on Earth, but what drives its weather and climate is poorly understood. Kyle and co-authors showed that, over the last three decades, the South Pole has experienced a statistically significant warming of 0.61 ± 0.34 °C per decade, more than three times the global average. They showed that the warming was linked to regional and large-scale climate conditions, including climate variability in the tropics. They also showed that regional climate change in Antarctica’s interior has masked any anthropogenic warming signal there during the twenty-first century.
About the Kidson Medal
The Kidson Medal is the highest recognition awarded by the Meteorological Society, with a nomination round every two years. It is awarded to a New Zealand author, or New Zealand affiliated author, for an outstanding scientific paper published recently in a refereed scientific journal. The paper must advance the science of meteorology/climatology, address influences between weather/climate and another research field, or report on a significant aspect of applied meteorology/climatology. The medal is named in honour of Dr Edward Kidson, OBE (1882–1939), the Director of the New Zealand Meteorological Service from 1927 to 1939.