Shine's research interests are in meteorology and climate science, with a focus on understanding how human activity initiates climate change.He has also investigated the role played by water vapour in the Earth's energy budget, which considers the energy flows both into and away from the Earth in the form of shortwave radiation from the Sun and outgoing longwave radiation from the Earth and its atmosphere, respectively.
In addition, Shine is at the forefront of identifying and quantifying radiative forcing, a way of measuring the strength of climate change mechanisms. He has been heavily involved in major United Nations' assessments of climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion, and was a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1995 IPCC Second Assessment Report.