Lisa Alexander is an Associate Professor in the Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses primarily on understanding the variability and driving mechanisms of climate extremes including, for example, how land surface changes or preconditioning might act to dampen or exacerbate heatwaves. Of particular significance is her ongoing work assessing global changes in temperature and rainfall extremes, which has contributed significantly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments. She contributed to the IPCC assessments in 2001 and 2007 and to the 2012 Special Report on Extremes and was a Lead Author of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report.

Lisa chairs a World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Commission for Climatology Expert Team and co-leads the World Climate Research Programme’s (WCRP) Grand Challenge on Weather and Climate Extremes. She is also on the Executive Committee of the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS) and is a member of the GEWEX Scientific Steering Group.