Biographical Sketch of Alan Robock

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

Read a December 2015 Scientist Spotlight about me from the Federation of American Scientists.

Click on pictures for high resolution versions: 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 in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Associate Director of the Center for Environmental Prediction, former Director of the Meteorology Undergraduate Program (2006-2015), 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.

Editor’s Award, Journal of Hydrometeorology, 2006.

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

Editor’s Citation for Excellence in Refereeing, Journal of Geophysical Research–Atmospheres, 2011.

Jule G. Charney Medal of the American Meteorological Society, 2015, “For fundamental contributions toward understanding the climatic effects of stratospheric aerosols from volcanoes and other potential sources, and the role of soil moisture in climate.”

Editor’s Citation for Excellence in Refereeing, Eos, 2015.

Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award, Who’s Who, 2017.

Participant in the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.

Cassandra Award, 2018, “For his warnings on the climatic consequences of nuclear conflict.”

Chancellor’s Award for Global Impacts, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, 2020.

Number 284 on Reuters Hot List of the world’s top 1000 climate scientists, April 20, 2021.

Selected to give the Stephen Schneider Lecture at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December, 2021.

Future of Life Award, August 6, 2022, “For reducing the risk of nuclear war by developing and popularizing the science of nuclear winter.”

Global Peace and Health Award from the International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War and the Boston Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, October 1, 2022.

Visiting Miller Professorship, Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, University of California, Berkeley, February through April, 2023.

Research: My research involves many aspects of climate change. I conduct both observational analyses and climate model simulations. My current research focuses on geoengineering, climatic effects of nuclear weapons, and the effects of volcanic eruptions on climate. I have published 500 articles on my research, including more than 290 peer-reviewed papers.

Service: I am Editor of Reviews of Geophysics, starting in January, 2023. I was also Editor of Reviews of Geophysics from July 2010 through December 2018, and Associate Editor, from September 1994 to December 2000, from February 2006 to June 2010, and January, 2019 through December, 2022. 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.
               I served 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 served on its Board of Trustees 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). In 2008-2010 I was President of the Atmospheric Sciences Section of AGU and in 2010-2011. I 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. From October 2018 through January 2019 I was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. From May through July 2019 I was a Visiting Fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Scientific Exchange: I believe that scientific exchange makes the world more peaceful by both improving relations between countries and producing better science. 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 1991. I returned to Russia in 2004 and in 2011. I have visited Cuba 7 times for scientific collaboration. You can, too; see https://connect.agu.org/atmosphericsciences/as-resources/special-event-archives#research-travel-to-cuba. For my most amazing experiences there, meeting Fidel Castro in 2010, see http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/Cuba/, and in 2011, see http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/Cuba2/.

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 February 1, 2024