List of climate scientists

Climate scientists study the statistics of the Earth's temperature (top) and precipitation (bottom) for a better understanding of the climate system.

This list of climate scientists contains famous or otherwise notable persons who have contributed to the study of climate science. The list is not necessarily complete or up to date. The list includes scientists from several specialities or disciplines.

Contents: A B C E F G H J K L M O P R S T V W — See also — References

A

• Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at University of Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department. Lead author, IPCC Third Assessment Report. Review editor, Fourth Assessment Report.
• Richard Alley (1957- ), American, Earth's cryosphere and global climate change.^[1]
• Kevin Anderson, is the Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and is an adviser to the British Government on climate change.^[2]
• Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927), Swedish, greenhouse effect.^[3]

B

• Sallie Baliunas, American, astrophysicist, solar variation.
• Robert Balling, American, former director of the Office of Climatology and is a professor of geography at Arizona State University, climatology, global climate change, and geographic information systems.^[4]
• Édouard Bard, French climate scientist, specialized in past climate reconstruction.
• Vilhelm Bjerknes (1862-1951), Norwegian, forecasting, numerical models.^[5]
• Raymond S. Bradley, American, historical temperatures, paleoclimatology, and climate variability.
• Keith Briffa (1952- ), United Kingdom, dendrochronology, temperature history.
• Wallace Smith Broecker (1931- ), American, Pleistocene geochronology, radiocarbon dating and chemical oceanography.^[6]

C

• Ken Caldeira, American, geoengineering, ocean acidification, atmospheric chemistry.
• Guy Stewart Callendar, English,(February 1898 - October 1964), steam engineer and inventor who proposed what eventually became known as the Callendar effect, the theory that linked rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to global temperature.
• Mark Cane, American, modeling and prediction of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.
• John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Best known (with Dr. Roy Spencer) for developing the first version of the satellite temperature record.
• Paul J. Crutzen (1933- ), Dutch, stratospheric and tropospheric chemistry, and their role in the biogeochemical cycles and climate.^[7]

E

• Kerry Emanuel (1955- ), American, atmospheric dynamics specializing in hurricanes.^[8]
• Matthew England (1966-), Australian, physical oceanographer and climate dynamicist.

F

• Joe Farman, British, ozone hole above Antarctica
• Joseph Fourier (1768-1830), French, greenhouse effect.^[9]
• Inez Fung American, climate modeling, biogeochemical cycles, and climate change.

G

• Peter Gleick (1956- ), American, hydroclimatologist, hydrologic impacts of climate change, snowfall/snowmelt responses, water adaptation strategies, consequences of sea-level rise.
• Jonathan M. Gregory

H

• Joanna Haigh, British, solar variability
• James E. Hansen (1941- ), American, planetary atmospheres, remote sensing, numerical models, and global warming.^[10]
• Ann Henderson-Sellers (1952- ), Australian, climate change risk evaluation.^[11]
• John T. Houghton (1931- ), British, atmospheric physics, remote sensing.^[12]

J

• Phil Jones (1952- ), British, instrumental climate change, palaeoclimatology, detection of climate change.
• Jean Jouzel, French, glaciologist and climatologist specializing in major climatic shifts

K

• Thomas R. Karl (1951- ), American, climate extremes and variability.
• Charles David Keeling (1928-2005), American, atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements, Keeling Curve.^[13]

L

• Kurt Lambeck, Australian, cryosphere-hydrosphere-lithosphere interactions, and sea level rise and its impact on human populations.^[14]
• Richard Lindzen (1940- ), American, dynamic meteorology, especially planetary waves.^[15]
• Edward Norton Lorenz (1917-2008), American, discovery of the strange attractor notion and coined the term butterfly effect.^[16]
• James Lovelock (1919- ), British, Gaia hypothesis and biotic feedbacks.^[17]

M

• Syukuro Manabe (1931- ), Japanese, pioneered the use of computers to simulate global climate change and natural climate variations.^[18]
• Gordon Manley (1902 – 1980), English, Central England temperature (CET) series.
• Michael E. Mann (1965- ), American, paleoclimate reconstructions.^[19]
• Patrick Michaels (1950- ), American climatologist.^[20][21]
• Gordon McBean, Canadian, boundary layer research, hydrometeorology and environmental impact research, and weather forecasting.^[22]
• Milutin Milanković (1879-1958), Serbian, Milankovitch cycles.^[23]
• John F. B. Mitchell, British, climate modelling and detection and attribution of climate change
• Mario J. Molina (1943- ), Mexican, atmospheric chemistry and ozone depletion.^[24]

O

• Abraham H Oort

P

• David E. Parker, British, surface temperature trend.
• William Richard Peltier (1943- ), Canadian, global geodynamic modeling and ice sheet reconstructions; atmospheric and oceanic waves and turbulence.
• Roger A. Pielke, Sr. (1946-), American, climate change, environmental vulnerability, numerical modeling, and atmospheric dynamics.
• Raymond Pierrehumbert, idealized climate modeling, Faint young sun paradox.
• Vicky Pope, British, Head of the Climate Prediction Programme at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.

R

• Stefan Rahmstorf (1960- ), German, the role of ocean currents in climate change.^[25]
• Veerabhadran Ramanathan, Indian, general circulation models, atmospheric chemistry, and radiative transfer.^[26]
• Roger Revelle (1909-1991), American, global warming and chemical oceanography.^[27]
• William Ruddiman, American, palaeoclimatologist, Early Anthropogenic Hypothesis

S

• Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (1950 - ), German climatologist, was an author for the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
• Gavin A. Schmidt (Gavin A. Schmidt is a climatologist and climate modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)
• Stephen H. Schneider (1945 - 2010), American, Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change at Stanford University.
• Stephen E. Schwartz (1941 - ), American, chemistry of air pollutants, radiative forcing of aerosols on climate.
• Richard C. J. Somerville (1941 - ), American, theoretical meteorology and atmospheric physics.
• Stocker, Thomas, Swiss, climate dynamics and paleoclimate modeling and reconstruction.
• Susan Solomon (1956 - ), American, chlorofluorocarbons and ozone depletion.^[28]
• J. Curt Stager (1956-), American, paleoclimatology [2], authur of Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth.
• Peter A. Stott, British, climate scientist [3].
• Hans E. Suess (1909-1993), Austrian, radiocarbon dating, Suess effect.^[29]

T

• Simon Tett, British, detection and attribution of climate change, model initialization, and validation.
• Peter Thejll (1956- )Danish, Northern Hemisphere land air temperature, solar variation and greenhouse effect.
• Lonnie Thompson (1948- ), American, paleoclimatology, ice cores.
• Kevin E. Trenberth, decadal variability, El Niño-Southern Oscillation.

V

• David Vaughan - ice sheets, British Antarctic Survey.

W

• John Michael Wallace, North Atlantic oscillation, Arctic oscillation, El Niño-Southern Oscillation.
• Andrew Watson (1952-), British, marine and atmospheric sciences.
• Andrew J. Weaver, Canadian, climate modeling and analysis.^[30]
• Carl Wunsch (1941- ), Physical oceanography and ocean acoustic tomography.^[31]

See also

• List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming
• List of authors from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis

References

1. ^ "Citation for Richard Alley". Penn State College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. http://www.geosc.psu.edu/documents/alley_seligman.pdf. Retrieved 6 February 2009. "Through the interpretation of paleoclimatic records from ice cores, Prof. Alley has examined [the stability of the ice sheets and glaciers of Antarctica and Greenland] response to past and future climate change. He has provided evidence that large, abrupt global climate changes have occurred repeatedly in the Earth’s history and has contributed to our understanding of the driving mechanisms of these changes." 
2. ^ Prof. Kevin Anderson, about. [1].
3. ^ The Royal Society (March 2007). "Fellow of the month - Arrhenius". http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=5971. Retrieved 11 March 2009. "Building on the idea by the French scientist Joseph Fourier that the Earth's atmosphere acted like the glass of a greenhouse, Arrhenius calculated the capacity of the Earth's surface at different latitudes and seasons to absorb and reflect solar radiation. From this he produced a series of temperature predictions, reasoning that large changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations would trigger feedback mechanisms causing glacial formation and retreat." 
4. ^ Professor Robert C. Balling, Jr. at Arizona State University; Balling, R.C. and Sen Roy, S. (2005), Analysis of spatial patterns underlying the linkage between solar irradiance and near-surface air temperatures, Geophysical Research Letters 32 (11): art. no. L11702 June 8, 2005; Emanuel K.A.; Idso S.B.; Balling R.C. ; Cerveny R.S. Comment on: Carbon dioxide and hurricanes: implications of Northern hemispheric warming for Atlantic-Caribbean storms. Author's reply, Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics 1991, vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 83-86, ISSN 0177-7971.
5. ^ Paul N. Edwards. "Before 1955: Numerical models and the prehistory of AGCMs". Atmospheric general circulation modeling: A participatory history. The American Institute of Physics. http://www.aip.org/history/sloan/gcm/prehistory.html. "[Bjerknes] developed a set of seven equations whose solution would, in principle, predict large-scale atmospheric motions." 
6. ^ Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2006). "The Crafoordprize: Geosciences". Archived from the original on 28 January 2009. http://web.archive.org/web/20080128220740/http://www.crafoordprize.se/prizesawarded/geoscienses.4.2f692b3510dbfce339680009417.html. "The Crafoord Prize in Geosciences 2006 is awarded to Wallace Broecker. With his innovative research on the interaction between atmosphere, oceans, ice and living organisms, he has contributed greatly to our knowledge of climate change and its mechanisms." 
7. ^ Naeun Choi (10 November 2008). "Nobel Prize Winner Paul Crutzen Appointed as SNU Professor". SNU News. Seoul National University. http://www.useoul.edu/news/news0101_view.jsp?idx=128770. Retrieved 17 March 2009. "Professor Paul Crutzen won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1995 for demonstrating destruction of stratospheric ozone which protects the Earth from Sun's ultraviolet radiation. He was one of the first scientists to identify the causes of the hole in the ozone layer, and has been actively engaging in environmental efforts." 
8. ^ Elizabeth A. Thomson (1 May 2007). "Five from MIT elected to National Academy of Sciences". Massachusetts Institute of Technology News Office. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/nas.html. Retrieved 7 March 2009. 
9. ^ Spencer Weart (June 2008). "The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect". The Discovery of Global Warming. American Institute of Physics. http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm. Retrieved 11 March 2009. "Beginning with work by Joseph Fourier in the 1820s, scientists had understood that gases in the atmosphere might trap the heat received from the Sun. As Fourier put it, energy in the form of visible light from the Sun easily penetrates the atmosphere to reach the surface and heat it up, but heat cannot so easily escape back into space. For the air absorbs invisible heat rays ("infrared radiation") rising from the surface. The warmed air radiates some of the energy back down to the surface, helping it stay warm. This was the effect that would later be called, by an inaccurate analogy, the 'greenhouse effect.'" 
10. ^ NASA (14 January 2009). "NASA Climate Scientist Honored by American Meteorological Society". http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2009/hansen_ams.html. Retrieved 5 February 2009. "Hansen earned the Rossby Medal for 'outstanding contributions to climate modeling, understanding climate change forcings and sensitivity, and for clear communication of climate science in the public arena.'" 
11. ^ The Royal Society (1 March 2007). "The science of climate change". http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=5765. Retrieved 7 March 2009. "Ann Henderson-Sellers [is]... a leader in describing and predicting the influence of land-cover and land-use change on climate and human systems." 
12. ^ John Houghton (28 July 2003). "Global warming is now a weapon of mass destruction". Guardian News and Media Limited. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1007042,00.html. Retrieved 7 March 2009. "As a climate scientist who has worked on this issue for several decades, first as head of the Met Office, and then as co-chair of scientific assessment for the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change, the impacts of global warming are such that I have no hesitation in describing it as a 'weapon of mass destruction'." 
13. ^ Helen Briggs (2 December 2007). "50 years on: The Keeling Curve legacy". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7120770.stm. Retrieved 7 March 2009. "His very precise measurements produced a remarkable data set, which first sounded alarm bells over the build-up of the gas in the atmosphere, and eventually led to the tracking of greenhouse gases worldwide." 
14. ^ Australian Academy of Science (9 May 2006). "Earth Scientist Elected New President of Science Academy". http://www.science.org.au/media/pres2006.htm. Retrieved 12 March 2009. "Kurt Lambeck, 64, was elected to the Academy in 1984. He has been at the [Australian National University] since 1977, including 10 years as Director of the Research School of Earth Sciences. His principal research areas have included climate and environmental sciences, geophysics and space science." ^{[dead link]}
15. ^ William K. Stevens (18 June 1996). "Scientist at Work: Richard S. Lindzen". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE0D91439F93BA25755C0A960958260. Retrieved 12 March 2009. "His opinions attacking the formal consensus about climate change have made the 56-year-old Dr. Lindzen a bete noir [sic] to environmentalists who trumpet the dangers of global warming ... But everyone takes him with the utmost seriousness because of a reputation for brilliance that got him elected to the National Academy of Sciences at age 37." 
16. ^ MIT News Office (26 June 1991). "Lorenz Receives 1991 Kyoto Prize". Massachusetts Institute of Technology. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/1991/24996/24998.html. Retrieved 17 March 2009. "Professor Lorenz 'made his boldest scientific achievement in discovering deterministic chaos, a principle which has profoundly influenced a wide range of basic sciences and brought about one of the most dramatic changes in mankind's view of nature since Sir Isaac Newton.'" ^{[dead link]}
17. ^ Michael McCarthy (28 September 2000). "James Lovelock: The man who changed the world". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/james-lovelock-the-man-who-changed-the-world-701088.html. Retrieved 12 March 2009. "In Gaia he had conceived more than a radical idea: suddenly he had created a new persona, a reinvented Mother Earth able to inspire reverence and awe besides scientific curiosity." 
18. ^ Lynn Dicks (27 January 2007). "Warming up to a career in climate change". New Scientist. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325882.400-warming-up-to-a-career-in-climate-change.html. Retrieved 7 March 2009. "Manabe developed the first mathematical models of the atmosphere to predict the effects of adding carbon dioxide." 
19. ^ BBC News (16 August 2004). "Climate legacy of 'hockey stick'". http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3569604.stm. Retrieved 7 March 2009. "There are few more provocative symbols in the debate over global warming than the "hockey stick"." 
20. ^ http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2647083.htm
21. ^ Pearce, Fred, The Climate Files: The Battle for the Truth about Global Warming, (2010) Guardian Books, ISBN: 978-0-85265-229-9, p. X.
22. ^ CFCAS website
23. ^ Steve Graham (24 March 2000). "Milutin Milankovic (1879-1958)". Earth Observatory. NASA. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Milankovitch/. Retrieved 11 March 2009. "The Serbian astrophysicist Milutin Milankovitch is best known for developing one of the most significant theories relating Earth motions and long-term climate change... Milankovitch dedicated his career to developing a mathematical theory of climate based on the seasonal and latitudinal variations of solar radiation received by the Earth." 
24. ^ Massachusetts Institute of Technology (11 October 1995). "MIT's Mario Molina wins Nobel Prize in chemistry for discovery of ozone depletion". http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1995/molina.html. Retrieved 7 March 2009. "The 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded... to MIT Professor Mario Molina for discovering the depletion of the ozone layer." 
25. ^ Anthony Mitchell (10 November 2006). "Expert Says Oceans Are Turning Acidic". The Associated Press. The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/09/AR2006110900973.html. Retrieved 7 February 2009. "Rahmstorf, the head of Germany's Potsdam Institute for Research into Climatic Effects, says more research is urgently needed to assess the impact of ocean acidification." 
26. ^ Nuzzo, Regina (2005). "Biography of Veerabhadran Ramanathan". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 102 (15): 5323–5325. doi:10.1073/pnas.0501756102. PMC 556241. PMID 15811938. http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/biography/PNAS_Bio.pdf. "Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002, Ramanathan is a distinguished professor of atmospheric sciences and the director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography." 
27. ^ Spencer Weart (June 2007). "Roger Revelle's Discovery". The Discovery of Global Warming. American Institute of Physics. http://www.aip.org/history/climate/Revelle.htm. Retrieved 16 March 2009. "It seemed certain that the immense mass of the oceans would quickly absorb whatever excess carbon dioxide might come from human activities. Roger Revelle discovered that the peculiar chemistry of sea water prevents that from happening. His 1957 paper with Hans Suess is now widely regarded as the opening shot in the global warming debates." 
28. ^ NOAA (5 January 2007). "Susan Solomon: Pioneering Atmospheric Scientist". Celebrating 200 Years of Science, Service, and Stewardship. http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/historymakers/solomon/welcome.html. Retrieved 23 March 2009. "Susan Solomon has altered the course of atmospheric research through her pioneering role in the international scientific community's efforts to discover the cause of depleted atmospheric ozone in the Antarctic, known as the ozone 'hole'." 
29. ^ Geisel Library (1875-1989). "Hans Suess Papers". Mandeville Special Collections Library. University of California, San Diego. http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/testing/html/mss0199a.html. Retrieved 23 March 2009. "Hans Suess... pioneered radiocarbon dating techniques... [He] worked with Hans Jensen on the development of the nuclear shell model, a project for which Jensen was later honored with the Nobel Prize... Suess was responsible for developing carbon-14 dating theories and has contributed to knowledge of the origin of the elements and the evolution of the solar system." 
30. ^ Vancouver Sun, August 9, 2009, Opinion, Andrew Weaver, last accessed 20091207
31. ^ Marotzke, J., L.L. Fu, and E. Tziperman (2007). "Carl Wunsch Special Issue". Journal of Physical Oceanography. doi:10.1175/JPO9030.1. http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1175%2FJPO9030.1. "Through the power of his vision, the rigor of his approach, and the generosity with which he has shared his ideas and resources, Carl has shaped the landscape of physical oceanography. Most scientists would be proud if they had effected one revolution in their field. Carl created four."