astronomy

Mark Howden

Mark Howden is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mark Howden rather than just read about it. In short: Stuart Mark Howden (commonly known as Mark Howden) is an Australian environmental scientist, whose research has focussed on climate change, agriculture, and adaptation. He is vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was director of the Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions at the Australian National University until 2025, chair of the ACT Climate Change Council, and he is an h…

Key takeaways

Mark Howden belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mark Howden to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mark Howden from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Stuart Mark Howden (commonly known as Mark Howden) is an Australian environmental scientist, whose research has focussed on climate change, agriculture, and adaptation. He is vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was director of the Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions at the Australian National University until 2025, chair of the ACT Climate Change Council, and he is an honorary professor at the University of Melbourne. In 2025 he was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia for his contributions to environmental science.

Early life and education Howden received a Bachelor of Science (First Class Honours) in Environmental Science from the University of New South Wales in 1983, and a Doctorate in "Sustainable Grazing Systems" from Griffith University in 1990.

Academic and research career Howden’s research has been focused on climate variability and climate change. In particular, his research addressed how those issues affect food production and food security, and how to adapt to those impacts. This included agricultural adaptation, food systems, land-use change and decision-support methods for climate risk management. He contributed to assessing greenhouse gas levels at the national and international levels, which are fundamental to the Paris Agreement, and he assessed how emissions can be reduced sustainably. Howden began his career as a pasture agronomist at the Queensland Department of Primary Industries from 1987 to 1990, followed by a role as section head, Bureau of Resource Sciences, in the Australian Department of Agriculture until 2000. He worked at the CSIRO until 2016, first as theme leader for “Australian Agriculture Transformed”, then as theme leader for "Primary Industries, Enterprises and Communities", and finally as chief research scientist in CSIRO Agriculture. Since 2008 he has held an honorary professorship at the University of Melbourne in the Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences (previously known as the School of Land/Environment). He is also an emeritus professor at ANU. He was the founding director of the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions (ICEDS). In 2015 he became interim director of the ANU Climate Change Institute, as it was then known, and he was formally appointed as director in 2016. He remained in this role until his retirement in 2025, during which time he expanded it from 150 researchers to more than 600. He was the chair of the ACT Climate Change Council from 2019 until 2025, and a member of the advisory group of the Global Commission on Adaptation since 2020.

Work with the IPCC and international assessment Howden has been involved with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in several roles since 1991, across its second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh Assessment Reports. He has contributed as a Lead Author, Review Editor, and Vice-Chair. In these roles, he contributed to global assessments that underpin international climate policy, including the Paris Agreement. His collective authorship contributed to the IPCC’s receipt of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Awards and recognition In the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours, Howden was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia “for eminent service to environmental science, to the global response on climate change and adaptation, to agriculture, and to tertiary education”. Other recognition includes:

Co-recipient, Nobel Peace Prize (2007) as part of the IPCC team, jointly with Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change". Sustainability Science Award, Ecological Society of America (2009) National Award for Excellence, Climate Research in Primary Industries (2012) He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) (2022). He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (2025)

Publications Different academic sources give different figures for publications. As of December 2025, Scopus lists 110 publications by Howden, with 17,129 citations and an h-index of 51. According to his Order of Australia citation, he is the author, co-author or editor of more than 440 works, with an h-index of 62.

References

External links Mark Howden – ANU Research Portal IPCC curriculum vitae: S. M. Howden (PDF) Farming in a New Climate Reality - Interview with Mark Howden of the IPCC

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mark Howden

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mark Howden claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mark Howden before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mark Howden ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mark Howden

In research: Mark Howden appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mark Howden in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mark Howden is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Academic staff of the Australian National University, Australian climatologists, Australian environmental scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mark Howden outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mark Howden in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mark Howden means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mark Howden out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mark Howden in simple terms?

Why does Mark Howden matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mark Howden?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mark Howden.