Garth William Paltridge (born 24 April 1940, Brisbane, Queensland) is a retired Australian atmospheric physicist.
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,[3] and in 1979 he was posted as senior visiting scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
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.
[6][7] Paltridge was involved in studies on stratospheric electricity, the effect of the atmosphere on plant growth and the radiation properties of clouds.
Paltridge introduced the subsequently disputed hypothesis that the earth/atmosphere climate system adopts a format that maximises its rate of thermodynamic dissipation, i.e., entropy production.