Linda Mearns
{{short description|Geographer and climate scientist}}
{{Infobox scientist
| fields = Climatology and geography
}}
Linda Opal Mearns (-25 January 2025) was a geographer and climate scientist specializing in climate change assessment science. Mearns was a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).{{Cite magazine |url=http://news.aag.org/2015/12/aag-distinguished-scholarship-linda-mearns/ |title=AAG Distinguished Scholarship Honors: Linda Mearns |date=2015-12-09 |magazine=AAG Newsletter |access-date=2020-03-07}}{{Cite book |year=2012 |title=A National Strategy for Advancing Climate Modeling |url=https://www.nap.edu/read/13430/chapter/24?term=Mearns#279 |publisher=The National Academies Press |page=279 |isbn=978-0-309-25977-4}} Mearns is the director of NCAR's Weather and Climate Impacts Assessment Science Program (WCIASP) and head of the Regional Integrated Sciences Collective (RISC). Mearns was a lead principal investigator for the North American Regional Climate Change Program (NARCCAP).{{Cite web |url=https://staff.ucar.edu/users/lindam |title=Linda Mearns |website=University Corporation for Atmospheric Research |access-date=2020-03-07}}
Biography
Mearns received a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in geography at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Mearns was an author on the Second (1995), Third (2001), Fourth (2007), Fifth (2013) and Sixth (2021) Assessment Reports of the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).{{Cite web |url=https://www.ipcc.ch/people/linda-mearns/ |title=Linda Mearns |website=Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change |access-date=2020-03-07}}{{Cite web|title=IPCC Authors (beta)|url=https://archive.ipcc.ch/report/authors/report.authors.php?q=35&p=&p|access-date=2021-08-08|website=archive.ipcc.ch}} Mearns was a lead principal investigator for the North American Regional Climate Change Program (NARCCAP) which uses data that Mearns was involved in generating to produce data-based climate simulations to predict future climate scenarios.
Selected publications
=Books=
- {{cite book |last=Mearns |first=Linda O. |year=2003 |title=Issues in the impacts of climate variability and change on agriculture: applications to the southeastern United States |publisher=Kluwer Academic Publishers |isbn=9781402016189}}
=Journal articles=
- Giorgi, F. and Mearns, L. O. Approaches to the simulation of regional climate change: A review. 1991. Reviews of Geophysics 29 (2), 191.
- Bukovsky, M. S.,Thompson, J. A., Mearns, L. O. Weighting a Regional Climate Model Ensemble: Does It Make a Difference? Can It Make a Difference? 2019. Climate Research 77 (1), 23-43.
- Mearns, L. O., Katz, R. W., and Schneider, S. H. Extreme High-Temperature Events: Changes in their probabilities with Changes in Mean Temperature. 1984. Journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology 23 (12), 1601-1613.
- Giorgi, F. and Mearns, L. O. 1999. Introduction to special section: Regional Climate Modeling Revisited. Journal of Geophysical Research 104 (D6), 6335-6352.
- Easterling, D. R., Meehl, G. A., Parmesan, C., Changnon, S. A., Karl, T. R., and Mearns L. O. 2000. Climate Extremes: Observations, Modeling, and Impacts. Science 289 (5487), 2068-2074.
- Giorgi, F. and Mearns, L. O. Calculation of Average, Uncertainty Range, and Reliability of Regional Climate Changes from AOGCM Simulations via the “Reliability Ensemble Averaging” (REA) Method. 2002. Journal of Climate 15 (10), 1141-1158.
- Feddema, J. J., Oleson, K. W., Bonan G. B., Mearns L. O., Buja L. E., Meehl G. A., Washington W. M. 2005. The Importance of Land-Cover Change in Simulating Future Climates. Science 310 (5754), 1674-1678.
Awards and honors
- 2006 Fellow of the American Meteorological Society
- 2016 American Association of Geographers (AAG) Distinguished Scholarship Award
- 2017 recipient of the American Geophysical Union Stephen Schneider Lecture{{cite web |url=https://www.agu.org/Honor-and-Recognize/Honors/Section-Awards/Schneider-Lecture |title=Stephen Schneider Lecture: Recipients |website=American Geophysical Union}}
References
{{reflist}}
{{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mearns, Linda Opal}}
Category:University of California, Los Angeles alumni
Category:National Center for Atmospheric Research faculty
Category:American climatologists