Rate My Professor Nerilie Abram

Professor Nerilie Abram is an Honorary Professor of Climate Science in the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University. She earned a BSc Advanced with honours and university medal from the University of Sydney between 1996 and 1999, followed by a PhD from the Australian National University from 2000 to 2004. Her career trajectory includes service as an ice core scientist at the British Antarctic Survey from 2004 to 2011, a position at the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences from 2011 to 2025, and her current role as Chief Scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division since 2025, while maintaining her honorary appointment at ANU. Abram has directed the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science and the Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century.

Abram's research employs Antarctic ice cores, tropical corals, and climate models to investigate natural climate variability, human-caused climate change from tropical oceans to Antarctica, and their consequences for Australia, including droughts, bushfires, and the Indian Ocean Dipole. She participated in key expeditions such as the James Ross Island ice core drilling in 2008, Aurora Basin in 2013-2014, and Mount Brown South in 2017-2018, revealing accelerated Antarctic warming and ice melt. She led a rapid review of climate factors in the 2019-2020 Black Summer fires and coordinates the PAGES 2k Network for paleoclimate data. As Coordinating Lead Author, she contributed to the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate in 2019 and leads the physical science chapter for the IPCC Seventh Assessment Report due in 2027. Prominent publications encompass 'Coral reef death during the 1997 Indian Ocean Dipole linked to Indonesian wildfires' (Science, 2003), 'Seasonal characteristics of the Indian Ocean Dipole during the Holocene epoch' (Nature, 2007), 'Early onset of industrial-era warming across the oceans and continents' (Nature, 2016), 'Indian Ocean Dipole variability during the last millennium' (Nature, 2020), 'Connections of climate change and variability to large and extreme forest fires in southeast Australia' (Communications Earth & Environment, 2021), and 'Emerging evidence of abrupt changes in the Antarctic environment' (Nature, 2025). Her honors include election as Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2024, the Dorothy Hill Medal in 2015, the Priestley Medal in 2019, and the Cesare Emiliani Lecture from the American Geophysical Union in 2025.