Introduction
Michael James "Jim" Salinger (born 25 April 1947) is a climate change scientist and honorary research fellow at the University of Otago. He has worked for the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), a Crown research institute. In 2012, Salinger was Lorry Lokey Visiting Professor at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. He works in Continuing Education at the University of Auckland and is a visiting scientist at the Institute of Biometeorology (IBIMET-CNR) in Rome.
Career
From 1986 to 2010, Salinger was New Zealand's principal delegate to the World Meteorological Organization's Commission for Agricultural Meteorology (CAgM). From 2006 to 2010, he served as its ninth president. In 2018, the commission awarded him for his exceptional service.
He was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 "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". His contributions have included lead authorship of most New Zealand-based scenarios "to facilitate impact and policy studies".
On 23 April 2009, Salinger was dismissed by NIWA, ostensibly for breaching NIWA's media policy. Salinger had represented NIWA to the public and media for many years and the dismissal caused a 'wide public outcry' according to Television New Zealand. The Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Science described the incident as a 'national embarrassment'. In late May 2009, Salinger stated that mediation with NIWA over the dismissal had failed and that he would be lodging a claim with the Employment Relations Authority. On 19 October 2009, the Employment Relations Authority in Auckland began a hearing into Salinger's dismissal; during the hearing it emerged the Salinger has suffered from depression. In December 2009, the Employment Relations Authority upheld Salinger's dismissal.