Dr Debbie Hemming will visit Birmingham 15 February-31 May 2015 and will be hosted by Professor Rob MacKenzie.
Dr Hemming is Scientific Manager for the Vegetation-Climate Interactions group within the Met Office Hadley Centre. Her group is focussed on improving the understanding and modelling of vegetation in the climate/earth system.
Deborah’s background integrates ecosystem research and climate/earth-system modeling, with the focus of improving understanding of ecosystem functioning and the potential impacts of environmental changes on ecosystem services. She completed a PhD on ‘Stable isotopes in tree rings: Biosensors of environmental change’ at the University of Cambridge Plant Sciences department, followed by post-doctoral research on vegetation-climate interactions in arid systems at University of Arizona, USA, and Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel.
Since joining the Met Office Hadley Centre in 2004 her work has focussed on large-scale Earth System Modelling and its application to climate risk management, contributing to and leading on a wide range of national and international projects. During this time she spent 8 months working at the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and Climate Change Committee Secretariat providing climate science advice during the passing of the UK Climate Change Bill. She also led the World Meteorological Organisation’s Task Team on Climate Risk Management between 2011 and 2014.
Currently, she is on the Steering Group for the UK Biodiversity Impacts of Climate Change Observation Network (BICCO-net), and is a Review Editor for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report that is currently in preparation on ‘Modelling impacts of drivers on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning’. She has over 50 peer-reviewed publications, including contributing author to the 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and led on many non peer-reviewed reports for customer projects.