Garth Paltridge

Garth William Paltridge (24 April 1940 - 1 May 2026 ) was an Australian atmospheric physicist. He was a visiting fellow at the Australian National University and emeritus professor and honorary research fellow at the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Oceans Studies (IASOS), University of Tasmania.

Career Paltridge obtained a BSc in 1961 from the University of Queensland, a PhD in 1965 from University of Melbourne and a DSc in 1976 from the University of Queensland. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in 1966, then as senior research scientist for the Radio and Space Research Station at Ditton Park, Buckinghamshire, England, from 1967–1968. In 1968 he took up a role as research scientist at the CSIRO, Australia, where he remained until 1981. During that time he worked briefly as a consultant to the World Meteorological Organization in 1975 in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was involved in the early development of the World Climate Program, and in 1979 he was posted as senior visiting scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He was elected as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1980. In 1981 he was seconded as director of the Environmental Executive of the Institute of Petroleum, and in 1982 he returned to the CSIRO as chief research scientist, where he remained until 1989. He briefly served as senior visiting scientist at the National Climate Program Office from 1989–1990. From 1990 to 2002 he was professor and director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Oceans Studies at the University of Tasmania.

Paltridge was involved in studies on stratospheric electricity, the effect of the atmosphere on plant growth and the radiation properties of clouds. As co-author with C.M.R. Platt, in 1976 Paltridge published a textbook entitled Radiative Processes in Meteorology and Climatology.

Views on climate change In August 2009 he published a book on the global warming debate, The Climate Caper. Paltridge agrees with the scientific consensus on climate change that anthropogenic global warming is real, but disagrees with mainstream scientific opinion in that he thinks that the warming will probably be too small to be a threat.