Emeritus Professor John Church AO has received the Prince Albert I gold medal for his influential career-long research on global sea level rise. This gold medal is awarded by the International Association of the Physical Sciences of the Oceans (IAPSO) every two years and is the highest recognition from this peak international science body.
"John Church is the pre-eminent authority on sea level change in the 20th and 21st centuries and its response to natural and human factors. After reconstructing the global sea level record back to the 1870s, he provided new insights into earth’s radiation budget and the oceans’ sequestration of anthropogenic heat. His work has been central to successive IPCC Working Group 1 reports and to the projection of sea level change as it will affect the 100 million people living within 1 m of present mean sea level".