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Professor Nerilie Abram
Contacts
My research goals are to build the knowledge of how the Earth’s climate has behaved in the past, and how its climate systems are now changing with anthropogenic greenhouse warming. My research involves using tropical coral reef and cave samples and polar ice cores to reconstruct past climates across a range of environments and time periods. My work utilises a wide array of chemical, isotopic and physical signals in these proxy records. I particularly enjoy being able to explain the direct human relevance of my research through scientific outreach and education.
My scientific work has taken me to Antarctica, Indonesia and Greenland. Outside of work I am also a mother of three children and I have a strong interest in helping to encourage women to excel in scientific careers.
Research interests
Professor Nerilie Abram is a climate scientist at the Australian National University. Her research uses Antarctic ice, tropical corals and climate models to understand how Earth’s climate system behaved over the last millennium, at both regional and global scales. Her multidisciplinary approaches have brought critical perspectives to modern day human-induced climate change, including bushfire, drought, the onset of anthropogenic warming and the ways that climate change is altering natural climate variability. She is a Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science and the Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century, and was a coordinating lead author on the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. In 2024 she was elected as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
Groups
- Researcher, Earth systems
- Researcher, Extreme events and future scenarios
Please contact me if you are interested in discussing student projects