Biographical Sketch of Alan Robock

Read a December 2010 interview in the Newsletter of the Atmospheric Sciences Section of the AGU.

Click on pictures for high resolution versions: In a tie. In a shirt with peace cranes.

Education and Peace Corps: I graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1970 with a B.A. in Meteorology. For the next 2 years I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines, developing curricula and training teachers of meteorology in the fishery vocational schools. I then attended graduate school in the Department of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving an S.M. in 1974 and Ph.D. in 1977.

Employment: From 1977 until the end of 1997, I was on the faculty of the Department of Meteorology of the University of Maryland, where I was a Professor and the State Climatologist of Maryland (1991-1997). I moved to Rutgers University in January, 1998, where I am a Distinguished Professor (Professor II) in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Associate Director of the Center for Environmental Prediction, Director of the Meteorology Undergraduate Program, and a member of the Graduate Program in Atmospheric Science. I was a snow forecaster for Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools for the winter of 1980-81.

Honors: Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, 1998.

Listed in Who's Who in America, 1999.

Antarctic Service Medal of the United States of America, 2006.

Participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, 2007.

American Meteorological Society/Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer, 2008-2009.

Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2008.

Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, 2011.

Research: My research involves many aspects of climate change. I conduct both observational analyses and climate model simulations. My current research focuses on geoengineering, regional atmosphere-hydrology modeling, climatic effects of nuclear weapons, soil moisture variations, the effects of volcanic eruptions on climate, and the impacts of climate change on human activities. I have published more than 320 articles on my research, including more than 180 peer-reviewed papers.

Service: I am Editor of Reviews of Geophysics, starting in July 2010. I was Editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres from April 2000 through March 2005 and of the Journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology from January 1985 through December 1987. I was Associate Editor of the Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres from November 1998 to April 2000 and of Reviews of Geophysics from September 1994 to December 2000 and from February 2006 to June 2010.
    I currently serve as a Lead Author in Working Group I for the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
    I have been the Member Representative for Rutgers University to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) since 2001, and serve on its Board of Trustees, for a term from 2012 to 2015.
    I am a member of the American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union (AGU), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and International Association of Volcanism and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI). I am Past-President of the Atmospheric Sciences Section of AGU and was Chair of the Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences Section (Section W) of the AAAS.

Sabbaticals: I was awarded a AAAS Congressional Science Fellowship in 1986, and served as Legislative Assistant to Congressman Bill Green (NY) and Research Fellow with the Environmental and Energy Study Conference from September, 1986, through August, 1987. During the 1994-95 academic year I was on sabbatical as a Visiting Research Scientist in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program at Princeton University, conducting climate research at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. My 2004-05 sabbatical was spent in Antarctica and at the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, Paris, France. In the Fall of 2011, I was on sabbatical as a Faculty Fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Scientific Exchange: I was an active participant in the US-USSR Agreement on Cooperation in the Field of Environmental Protection, visiting the Soviet Union as an Exchange Scientist 6 times from 1979 through 1985, once in 2004, and once in 2011.

Music: My favorite music is rock and folk, especially the music of

Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, and Christine Lavin.

Prepared by Alan Robock (robock@envsci.rutgers.edu) - Last updated on September 15, 2012