[4] Trenberth received the 2017 Roger Revelle Medal[5] from the American Geophysical Union for his work on climate change issues.

[7][8][9] He was educated at Linwood High School, where he was dux in 1962,[9] and went on to study at the University of Canterbury, graduating BSc (Hons) with first-class honours in 1966.

He became a high level emeritus at NCAR as a Distinguished Scholar in 2019 and he moved back to New Zealand where he is also an honorary affiliated faculty at the University of Auckland.

[13]: 128 He has been prominent in most of the IPCC assessment reports[13]: 70–83  and has also extensively served the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) in numerous ways.

In addition, he served on the Joint Scientific Committee of the WCRP and has made significant contributions to research into El Niño-Southern Oscillation.

Trenberth pointed out that the intermittent nature of precipitation mandated attention to intensity, frequency, duration, and type as well as amount.

Trenberth participated in a tele-news conference, set up by Harvard University, and cautiously suggested that global warming was undoubtedly playing some role.

Two important studies who supported Kevin's research findings came out shortly thereafter: One by Kerry Emanuel,[20] and another led by Peter Webster.

In a 2013 scientific paper in Geophysical Research Letters, Trenberth and co-authors presented an observation-based reanalysis of global ocean temperatures.

This proposed that a recent hiatus in upper-ocean warming after 2004 had seen the long-term increase interrupted by sharp cooling events due to volcanic eruptions and El Niño.

[24] In a second 2013 paper, Trenberth and Fasullo discussed the effect of the 1999 change from a positive to negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

[27][28][29] Kevin Trenberth was "one of the victims in “Climategate” where hacked emails from climate scientists were distorted by climate-change deniers to sow confusion.

It stems from a paper I published this year bemoaning our inability to effectively monitor the energy flows associated with short-term climate variability.

It is quite clear from the paper that I was not questioning the link between anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and warming, or even suggesting that recent temperatures are unusual in the context of short-term natural variability.

[33] Trenberth received the 2017 Roger Revelle Medal[5] from the American Geophysical Union for his work on climate change issues.