IUGG elects Prof. Philip Woodworth as an IUGG Fellow

24 January 2019

The PSMSL is delighted to announce that Prof. Philip Woodworth has been elected as an International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) Fellow – this will be formally bestowed by the IUGG President at the Award Ceremony of the XXVII IUGG General Assembly on 13 July 2019 in Montreal, Canada. Fellowship of the IUGG is a tribute, awarded by the IUGG Bureau, to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to international cooperation in geodesy or geophysics and attained eminence in the field of Earth and space sciences (IUGG by-law 22).

Prof. Woodworth was Director of the PSMSL for many years, and through promotion of the PSMSL and publications across a range of topics (underpinned by PSMSL data), he has contributed to research on sea level variability on a wide range of time scales. His work with rare historical data sets has put the changes seen during the 20th and 21st centuries into a long-term context, in particular helping to estimate acceleration of sea level rise. His work has benefited research and international communities in the fields of past sea level change, climate change, ocean circulation and tides, coastal processes, vertical crustal motions at coastlines, geology, geodesy and calibration of altimetry systems.

Prof. Woodworth has been a lead or contributing author for each of the first four Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) research assessments (to 2007) and a Review Editor for the Fifth Assessment Report (2013). He has participated in the Global Sea Level Observing System (GLOSS, under the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission) Group of Experts since it began in 1989, chairing the Group from 1997 to 2004.

He is currently an Emeritus Fellow of the National Oceanography Centre and Visiting Professor, Liverpool University School of Environmental Sciences.

His IUGG citation reads: “Woodworth, Philip (UK) for his significant advancement of sea-level science and outstanding contribution to international scientific cooperation, especially his leadership of the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL).”

It has been a good year for sea level scientists as, in addition to Prof. Woodworth, Dr. Anny Cazenave (Laboratoire d’Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales (LEGOS), France) also receives an IUGG Fellowship “for her invaluable research and tireless contribution to the science of understanding the Earth system evolution, including mean sea level variations”.

PSMSL congratulates them both together with the other five Fellows elected by the IUGG.