Rate My Professor Blair Fitzharris

Professor Blair Fitzharris is Emeritus Professor in the School of Geography at the University of Otago. He has undertaken research on climate change in New Zealand, Canada, Norway, England, Switzerland, and Australia, focusing on climate, snow, and glaciers. His investigations cover impacts of climate change on glaciers and snow, including sensitivity to climate change, threshold temperatures, precipitation changes, past behavior related to climatic variability and atmospheric circulation, and computer simulation models for future scenarios. He has examined effects on runoff, snowline elevation, water shortages, hazards, sea levels, alpine tourism, and recreation. Fitzharris has also studied vulnerability, adaptation, and impacts of climate change in Australia and New Zealand, such as warming, drying, more storms, agricultural and forestry shifts, bio-security threats, ecosystem changes, water security, and coastal vulnerabilities to storm surges and sea-level rise.

He has authored over 150 research publications on these topics. Key works include "Climate extremes in the New Zealand region: Mechanisms, impacts and attribution" (2024, International Journal of Climatology), "Extending end-of-summer-snowlines for the Southern Alps Glaciers of New Zealand back to 1949" (2021, International Journal of Climatology), and "Unparalleled coupled ocean-atmosphere summer heatwaves in the New Zealand region: Drivers, mechanisms and impacts" (2020, Climatic Change). With 35 years as a consultant, he has advised New Zealand's largest corporations on climate issues in resource development, mining, land use, and energy projects. Since 1992, he has held senior IPCC roles, as Convening Lead Author for four Assessment Reports on the cryosphere, polar regions, and Australia & New Zealand, Review Editor for the Fifth Assessment Report (Australasia), and UNEP Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Mountains). He served on Antarctica New Zealand’s Research Committee, Royal Society of New Zealand’s Climate Change Committee, as President of the Meteorological Society of New Zealand, and Chair of the New Zealand Mountain Safety Council. In 2007, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the IPCC.