We can now detect human-induced regional warming on every continent of the globe. This finding stemmed from Environment Canada’s Dr. Nathan Gillett’s pioneering work in the field of climate change detection and attribution,which culminated in the influential paper, Attribution of polar warming to human influence, published in Nature Geoscience in 2008, and earned him this year's President's Prize from the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS).

For this paper, Dr. Gillett led a team of international scholars in the discovery of an anthropogenic warming signal in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Through the use of an elegant application of optimal fingerprinting, he was able to show that the warming in the polar regions was directly attributable to human activities.

Dr. Gillett received the award at the 46th CMOS Congress, which was held in Montreal, Quebec, from May 30 to 31, 2012.

Contact: Greg Flato, 250-363-8233, Manager, Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Climate Research Division