Emeritus Professor John Church AO FAA FTSE FAMS FAGU, the winner of the Society’s 2022 James Cook Medal,  has been awarded the Prince Albert I Medal by the International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Oceans (IAPSO), for his outstanding contribution to sea level research and related new insights into climate change.

IAPSO recognises John Church as 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, Professor Church provided new insights into the 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 one metre of the present mean sea level.

The Prince Albert I Medal in the physical and chemical sciences of the oceans was initiated by Prince Rainier of Monaco in partnership with the International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Oceans and is named in honour of the late Prince Albert I of Monaco who, in 1919, organised the Oceanography Section of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics. He also served as the first President of that section. 

The Council of the Royal Society of NSW extends its warmest congratulations to Professor John Church on this esteemed recognition of his outstanding research career.