Kiwi glacier pioneer Chinn dies
The godfather of New Zealand glaciers has died.
Scientist Trevor Chinn, 81, was a leading glaciologist, geologist, meteorologist and climatologist with a stunning career spanning more than 60 years.
Son Warren Chinn said his father died at Dunstan Hospital in Central Otago on Thursday, after a stroke. ‘‘Our family, friends, the glaciology and mountaineering community and New Zealand science have lost a national treasure,’’ he said.
Chinn was born in 1937 in Hokitika before moving to Te Taho near the Whataroa River in South Westland.
Warren Chinn, who works for the Department of Conservation as an entomologist and ecologist, said his father recounted looking at the rain teeming down over the Southern Alps as a child and wondering where it had come from and where it was going.
‘‘He said to his mother ‘that’s an awful lot of rain in the mountains, it must want to come out’. That mindfulness of water set him on a lifelong course,’’ he said.
As a young man, Trevor Chinn joined the North Canterbury Catchment Board, where he learned how to measure river flow. He was then headhunted to the Ministry of Works in the 1950s to work in the Mackenzie Basin and in 1962 he began a geological snow survey of the Tasman Glacier.
He conducted the first ever rigorous study of snow and mass balance of glaciers in New Zealand.
In 1967, he was asked to submit glacier information from New Zealand to the International Hydrological Decade for Unesco.
The Ivory Glacier upstream from the Waitaha River south of Ross in South Westland was selected as the perfect subject.
It has almost disappeared today. Chinn, along with a team of others, studied the glacier’s movements, melt, erosion, how much water fell on the glacier and how much water released into the sea. ‘‘The glacier was receding before their very eyes and my father was right there in the thick of it. It was fabulous for the evolution of New Zealand science.
He took quite complex work and condensed it all into measurable information and it all came together like a Venn diagram,’’ Warren Chinn said.
The project lasted until 1985 and resulted in invaluable information, numerous reports and scientific papers.
In 1970, Trevor Chinn took his first of 20 trips to Antarctica where he studied the ice and dry valleys of the continent.
In the 70s, he flew over the Southern Alps several times conducting the first New Zealand Glacial Inventory to document the country’s 3155 glaciers, including those in the North Island’s Ruapehu.
Chinn took amazing photographs of his work creating a huge catalogue of 33mm slides. He was a member of the International Glaciological Society and the New Zealand Alpine Club.
In his later career, he became ‘‘more wedded to the snow line’’, Warren Chinn said.
Trevor Chinn studied the behaviour of glaciers in correlation to the behaviour of the snow line. It was the longest glaciological dataset in New Zealand and continues today.
Trevor Chinn was made redundant from GNS in the 1990s and began working for the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa).
He retired at 65, but continued to work as an independent contractor for Niwa up until his death.
‘‘He was an extraordinary guy. He was very persistent and dogged. He kept doggedly going and going,’’ his son said.
Chinn is survived by wife Barbara, sons Warren and Derek, grandchildren Sylvia, Georgia and Alexander. There will be a private cremation in Alexandra followed by a memorial service in Lake Hawea in January.