John Shepherd, PhD

Professorial Research Fellow
School of Ocean & Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre
University of Southampton

John Shepherd is a Professorial Research Fellow in Earth System Science in the School of Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, UK. He is a physicist by training, and has worked on the transport of pollutants in the atmospheric boundary layer, the dispersion of tracers in the deep ocean, the assessment & control of radioactive waste disposal in the sea, on the assessment and management of marine fish stocks, and most recently on Earth System Modeling and climate change. His current research interests include the natural variability of the climate system on long time-scales, and the development of intermediate complexity models of the Earth climate system for the interpretation of the palaeo-climate record. He graduated (first degree and PhD) from the University of Cambridge. From 1989-1994 he was Deputy Director of the MAFF Fisheries Laboratory at Lowestoft, and the principal scientific adviser to the UK government on fisheries management. From 1994-1999 he was the first Director of the Southampton Oceanography Centre. He has extensive experience of international scientific assessments and advice in the controversial areas of fisheries management, radioactive waste disposal, and climate change, and has recently taken a particular interest in the interaction between science and public policy. He has chaired a number of independent scientific & technical reviews of major offshore oil & gas decommissioning projects in the North Sea. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999, participated in the Royal Society study on Ocean Acidification published in 2005, and chaired the study on Geoengineering the Climate published in 2009.

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