Trevor John McDougall

The 2025 Alfred Wegener Medal & Honorary Membership is awarded to Trevor John McDougall for outstanding contributions to ocean science that have fundamentally changed how we understand the ocean and its role in shaping the Earth’s climate.

Over his esteemed and extremely influential career, Trevor McDougall has made an outstanding contribution to ocean science that have fundamentally changed how we understand
the ocean and its role in shaping the earth’s climate. His scientific insights are used by ocean scientists daily – whether they are assessing ocean observations and/or model data, undertaking theoretical studies or dynamical systems simulations – and will be continued to be used by future ocean scientists.

McDougall’s scientific achievements include: improved fundamental understanding of oceanic mixing processes; recognition of the impact of ocean eddies to the mean circulation and development of the parameterisations to represent this interaction for implementation into
ocean models; development of the concept of neutral surfaces along which the strong lateral mixing processes occur; and re-defining the ocean equation of state (TEOS-10). These scientific achievements are firmly based on robust theoretical principles and understanding. While this in itself constitutes a significant contribution to ocean science, it is McDougall’s pursuit of the wide-spread adoption of these ocean science advancements by the entire community that truly underlines his outstanding contribution to the advancement of science.

Trevor McDougall is a pioneer in taking theoretically-based ocean concepts, and making them applicable, usable and freely accessible to the entire community. He, with colleagues, developed the sub-grid scale parameterisation of the temporal residual mean theory that is now commonly used in all ocean models. He developed the computer software code, in various computer languages, to calculate neutral density from ocean observations of pressure, salinity and temperature, and made this code freely accessible to all. The adoption of TEOS-10 in both numerical model- and observational-based studies, through the development and promotion of the Gibbs SeaWater (GSW) Oceanographic Toolbox of TEOS-10, has cemented the use of the more accurate thermodynamic equation of seawater by the entire ocean scientific community. McDougall’s commitment to development of open and readily usable software code has had a profound impact on the uptake of his scientific contributions and potential future advancement of ocean science.