Dr Terry O'Kane

Group Leader

https://people.csiro.au/O/T/Terence-OKane

+61362325066

GPO BOX 1538
HOBART TAS 7001 AUSTRALIA

Biography

Terry O’Kane is currently the group leader of Modelling the Earth System and senior principal research scientist in the Environment Business Unit of CSIRO, Hobart. He previously led the Geophysical Fluids, Climate Forecasting and Ocean Modelling teams. Terry is currently leading projects around "Causal inference in high dimensional multiscale systems" delivering to CSIRO missions and Future Science Platforms. Terry has previously led the data assimilation and modelling activity of the CSIRO decadal prediction project and the National Environmental Science Program Earth System Climate Change Hub project “Towards an ACCESS Decadal Prediction System”. Together with Prof. Adam Scaife (UK Met Office), Terry was co-chair of the committee for the World Climate Research Program Grand Challenge for Near Term Climate Forecasting.

Between 2013-2016 Terry was an ARC Future Fellow at the Full Professor level. He has or holds adjunct positions in mathematics (Professor, Senior Research Fellow) and marine and antarctic science (Senior Research Fellow) at the University of Tasmania and with the ARC Centre for Climate Extremes (CLEX). Prior to joining CSIRO, Terry was ensemble prediction scientist at the Bureau of Meteorology where he implemented the Australian Global and Regional Ensemble Prediction System adapted from the UK Met Office MOGREPS system.

Terry has over 120 publications (web of science B-1655-2009) including on the statistical mechanics and dynamics of geophysical flows, for which he was awarded the 2013 JH Michell Medal, of the Australian Mathematical Society (Applied Mathematics) http://www.anziam.org.au/The+2013+JH+Michell+Medal. In 2023 Terry was made a Fellow of the Australian Mathematical Society.

In October 2022 Terry was awarded Doctor of Science (DSc) from the University of Melbourne for a substantial body of work spanning the disciplines of atmospheric dynamics, physical oceanography, stochastic analysis and modelling.

Terry's recent work has focussed on the application of machine learning to climate regime identification and prediction and on the development of the Climate re-Analysis and Forecast Ensemble (CAFE) system at CSIRO. The CAFE60 re-analysis represents the first large ensemble reconstruction of the climate over the last six decades with nearly 100 replicant earths and is publicly available as an open data platform at Amazon Web services (https://registry.opendata.aws/csiro-cafe60/). Completed in early 2020, the CSIRO CAFE prediction system is currently the first and only operational climate forecasting in the Southern Hemisphere https://hadleyserver.metoffice.gov.uk/wmolc/

Professional Areas

Fields of Research

Current

Current Roles

Group Leader
Modelling the Earth System

Academic Qualifications

2022

Doctor of science
The University of Melbourne
2003

PhD (Applied Mathematics)
Monash University
1999

MSc(by research) 1st class H1A (Theoretical Physics)
The University of Melbourne
1997

BSc(Hons) 1st class H1A (Pure & Applied Mathematics)
LaTrobe University

Professional Experiences

2022-present

Senior Principal Research Scientist
CSIRO Environment
2015-2022

Principal Research Scientist
CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere
2014-2017

Adjunct Professor (mathematics)
University of Tasmania
2013-2017

Australian Research Council Future Fellow (Full Professor)
CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere
2010-2013

Senior Research Scientist
CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere
2009-2010

Research Scientist
CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere
2007-2009

Ensemble Prediction Scientist
Bureau of Meteorology
2006-2007

Research Fellow
ACE CRC / UTAS
2003-2006

Emerging Science Postdoctoral Fellow
CSIRO Atmospheric Science

Achievements and Awards

2023-present

Fellow Australian Mathematical Society
Australian Mathematical Society (FAustMS)
2022-present

Doctor of Science
The University of Melbourne
2021-present

Associate editor: Journal of advances in modelling earth systems (JAMES)
American Geophysical Union
2014-2018

Adjunct Professor - mathematics
University of Tasmania
2013-2017

ARC Future Fellow
Australian Research Council
2014-2022

Adjunct Senior Research Fellow
UTAS IMAS
2013-2013

Visiting Scientist
Princeton University
2013-2013

JH Michell Medal
Australian Mathematics Society

Other highlights

13 July 2022-15 July 2022

Plenary speaker SIAM Mathematics for planet earth (MPE22), Pittsburgh, USA
2nd October 2019-4th October 2019

Panelist: Intelligence Amplified: D61+ LIVE 2019: Big Ideas Stage: AI for environmental and social good:
3rd December 2019 -6th December 2019

Keynote speaker: 63nd Annual Meeting of the Australian Mathematical Society, Monash University
14th August 2017-18th August 2017

Invited speaker: Turbulent Mixing and Beyond, Sixth International Conference Tenth Anniversary Program, 14-18 August, 2017 the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Strada Costiera 11, Trieste, Italy
2o November 2016-26 November 2016

Invited lecturer: Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach seminar series, Oberwolfach, Germany, November 20-26, 2016 “Different mathematical perspectives on description of unresolved scales in multiscale systems” with (R. Klein, C. Hartmann & I. Horenko)
2nd Feb 2014-6th Feb 2014

Plenary Speaker: Australian and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ANZIAM) Conference 2014, 2nd-6th February, Rotorua, New Zealand

Grants

2016-2018

NESP ESCC Project 2.3 Towards an ACCESS decadal prediction system
2013-2016

ARC Future Fellow: The stability and predictability of the Southern-Hemisphere coupled ocean-atmosphere climate system
2015-2016

CSIRO Complex Systems Science Travel Grant
2018-2020

eResearch collaboration project (x2): Inhomogeneous turbulence closures on GPUs for application to problems in climate modelling
2003-present

Multiple Emerging Science, ACE CRC, OCE, ResearchPlus, Antarctic Gateway, MLAI FSP postdoctoral and research fellow grants

Community and Corporate Citizenship

2018-2022

Co-chair World Climate Research Program (WCRP) Grand Challenge Near Term Climate Prediction
2019-present

WCRP Decadal Prediction Committee
2019-present

assessment panels for the National Computational Merit Allocation Scheme (NCMAS)
2020-present

assessment panels for the Australian Leadership Computing Grants (ALCG) scheme
2018-present

O&A High Performance Computing committee
2020-present

CSIRO Research Integrity Adviser Oceans & atmosphere
2019-present

CSIRO Career Mentor