James is a climate researcher who studies Southern Hemisphere climate variability, and the impacts of climate change on the Pacific, New Zealand and the Antarctic. He was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for 20 years, contributing to the 4th, 5th, and 6th Assessment Reports. James was awarded the Prime Minister’s 2018 prize for Science Communication and was part of the team that won the Prime Minister’s Science Prize in 2019. He was a Commissioner on the New Zealand Climate Change Commission from 2019 to 2024.