Dr Theodore Shepherd

Professor

Department of Physics, University of Toronto

PH: 1 (416) 978-2931
Email: [email protected]
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Background

Ted Shepherd is Professor of Physics at the University of Toronto. He obtained a B.Sc. degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Toronto in 1979, and a Ph.D. degree in Meteorology from MIT in 1984 (working under the supervision of Jule Charney and Peter Rhines). After a postdoctoral fellowship with Michael McIntyre at DAMTP, University of Cambridge, he took up a faculty position at the University of Toronto in 1988. He was promoted to associate professor in 1993 and to full professor in 1996. From 2005-2010 he served as the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies in Physics.

In the early part of his career Shepherd pioneered the application of Hamiltonian dynamics to geophysical fluid dynamics. Subsequently he turned his attention to the dynamics of the Earth’s middle atmosphere (stratosphere and mesosphere), where he has become a leading authority on middle atmosphere dynamics and climate modelling, and chemistry-climate interactions. In this capacity he has, since its origin in 1993, led the highly successful university-government collaboration to develop and use the Canadian Middle Atmosphere Model (CMAM), creating an entirely new research community in Canada. The CMAM has achieved a number of notable firsts, and is currently regarded as one of the leading chemistry-climate models in the world.

Shepherd currently co-chairs the Scientific Steering Group of the World Climate Research Programme’s SPARC Project, in which he has been active for over 15 years. He has also played key roles in the WMO/UNEP Ozone Assessments of 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2010— in 2006 as a member of the Assessment’s Steering Committee — as well as the IPCC/TEAP Special Report on Ozone and Climate (2005). For five years (2001 through 2005) he was the Chief Editor of the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, the leading journal in fundamental atmospheric science. He has won the top awards of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (President’s Prize, 1995) and the Meteorological Service of Canada (Patterson Medal, 2005), and is a Fellow of the CMOS, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the Royal Society of Canada.