Prof David Griggs - Researcher Profile

From OMC

Address

Monash University
Wellington Road, Clayton

Biography

After decades of warning the world of the threat of climate change, Professor Dave Griggs has come to Monash to do something about it. The director of the Monash Sustainability Institute, formerly a leading figure in the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says a combination of research, education and action is our best weapon against global warming.

Dave has been living with the realities of climate change for more than 30 years. 

Since his beginnings as a PhD student studying cloud physics, Dave has gone on to lead some of the world’s most respected climate change organisations. 

He became the Deputy Chief Scientist at the UK’s Met Office – Britain's Bureau of Meteorology - and director of the world's leading climate modelling centre, the Hadley Centre for Climate Change.

Dave provided scientific advice during the Kyoto Protocol negotiations, and was Head of the IPCC science working group secretariat that gathered and assessed the research of the world’s top climate scientists. The IPCC would later share the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.

But after years of working at the forefront of climate science, Dave became frustrated with the lack of urgency he saw around him.

"I spent 20 years in and around weather and climate and over 10 years trying to alert the world to the threat we were facing," Dave says.

"There was an increasing acknowledgement that climate change was real, but the response at a political, business and industry level and an individual level just wasn't commensurate with the scale of the challenge.

"I felt that if I believed what I was saying, then rather than just keep saying for another 10 years that the world was going to end, I had better try and do something about it."

So he moved to Australia and took on the challenge of leading the Monash Sustainability Institute (MSI).

MSI is a bold attempt to unite experts across disciplines, and respond to the economic, social and environmental challenges of creating a sustainable future.

As MSI's first full-time director, Dave feels he is finally able to do something about climate change.

"I decided we had to do three things: research, education and action," Dave says.

“The research had to be something that would pull through and be applied, and action was crucial, because we wanted to be able to put our hands on our hearts and say we made a difference.

“But education is also the key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is today’s students picking up the right attitudes and taking those attitudes into the workplace and their daily lives, and passing them on to their children and so on.”

MSI now oversees a growing research effort across all aspects of sustainability. ClimateWorks Australia, a partnership with the Myer Foundation, has released the influential Low Carbon Growth Plan, which proves Australia can substantially cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 at low cost. And more than 500 people have undergone training in the award-winning Green Steps program.

Dave believes it is not too late to save the world from the worst ravages of climate change. But only just.

“The next ten years are the critical ten years. We have just about got enough time.”

“But we have to act now.”

Qualifications

ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS
Institution: University of Manchester
Year awarded: 1982
PHYSICS
Institution: University of Manchester
Year awarded: 1979

Publications

Books

Watson, R.T., Albritton, D.L., Barker, T., Bashmakov, I., Canziani, O.F., Christ, R., Cubasch, U., Davidson, O.R., Gitay, H., Griggs, D.J., Halsnaes, K., Houghton, J.T., House, J.I., Kundzewicz, Z.W., Lal, M., Leary, N., Magadza, C., McCarthy, J.J., Mitchell, J.F.B., Moreira, J.R., Munasinghe, M., Noble, I., Pachauri, R.K., Pittock, B., Prather, M.J., Richels, R.G., Robinson, J.B., Sathaye, J., Schneider, S., Scholes, R., Stocker, T., Sundararaman, N., Swart, R.J., Taniguchi, T., Zhou, D.W., 2001, Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report. A Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

Houghton, J.T., Ding, Y., Griggs, D.J., Noguer, M., van der Linden, P.J., Dai, X., Maskell, K., Johnson, C.A., 2001, Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

Book Chapters

Albritton, D.L., Filho, L.M., Cubasch, U., Dai, X., Griggs, D.J., Hewitson, B., Houghton, J.T., Isaksen, I., Karl, T., McFarland, M., Meleshko, V.P., Mitchell, J.F.B., Noguer, M., Nyenzi, B.S., Oppenheimer, M., Penner, J.E., Pollonais, S., Stocker, T., Trenberth, K.E., 2001, Technical Summary, in Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, eds Houghton, J.T., Y. Ding, D.J. Griggs, M. Noguer, P.J. van der Linden, X. Dai, K. Maskell and C.A. Johnson, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.

Journal Articles

Griggs, D., Kestin, T., 2011, Bridging the gap between climate scientists and decision makers, Climate Research [P], vol 47, Inter Research, Luhe Germany, pp. 139-144.

Folland, C.K., Griggs, D.J., Houghton, J.T., 2004, History of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Weather [P], vol 59, issue 11, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, United Kingdom, pp. 317-323.

Conference Proceedings

Vera, C., Barange, M., Dube, O., Goddard, L., Griggs, D., Kobysheva, N., Odada, E., Parey, S., Polovina, J., Poveda, G., Seguin, B., Trenberth, K., 2010, Needs assessment for climate information on decadal timescales and longer, Procedia Environmental Sciences [E], Elsevier, Amsterdam, Netherlands, pp. 275-286.

Vera, C., Barange, M., Dube, O.P., Goddard, L., Griggs, D.J., Kobysheva, N.V., Odada, E.O., Parey, S., Polovina, J.J., Poveda, G., Seguin, B., Trenberth, K.E., 2009, Towards predication of decadal climate variability and change, WCC-3 Decadal Climate Variable Session, 31 August 2009 - 4 September 2009, World Meteorological Organisation, Geneva Switzerland, pp. 1-20.

Other

Wallis, P.J., Birrell, R.J., Griggs, D.J., Healy, E.J., Langford, J., Stanley, J.R., 2009, Melbourne's water situation: The opportunity for diverse solutions, Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University Clayton Campus, pp. 1-29.

Lynch, A.H., Griggs, D.J., Nicholls, N., 2008, Defining the impacts of climate change on catastrophic events, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, Australia, pp. 1-17.

Lynch, A.H., Nicholls, N., Alexander, L.V., Griggs, D.J., 2008, Defining the impacts of climate change on extreme events, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, Australia, pp. 1-19.