Katharine Hayhoe

Background

One of the world’s leading climate scientists, Dr. Katharine Hayhoe has been named among Time’s 100 most influential people, Foreign Policy’s 100 leading global thinkers, and Fortune’s 50 world’s greatest leaders. She is a lead author of the nation’s Fourth National Climate Assessment soon to be submitted to the President and Congress. The New York Times called her “… one of the nation’s most effective communicators on the threat of climate change and the need for action.” Katharine Hayhoe is a political science professor at Texas Tech University, Lubbock. She is director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech, part of the Department of Interior. She has a B.Sc. in physics from the University of Toronto and an M.S. and Ph.D. in atmospheric science from the University of Illinois. She has conducted local climate impact assessments for a broad cross-section of organizations, cities, and regions, from Boston Logan Airport to the state of California to Austin Water. Her work has resulted in over 125 peer-reviewed publications that evaluate global climate impacts on cities, states, ecosystems, and sectors over the coming century. She served as a lead author of the Second and Third U.S. National Climate Assessments, reports published every four years in accord with an act initiated by President Bush in 1989 and mandated by Congress in 1990, called the U.S. Global Change Research Act (GCRA). She has served on panels for the National Academy of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and many other professional organizations. She is also the founder and CEO of ATMOS Research which “bridges the gap between scientists and stakeholders to provide relevant … information on how climate change will affect our lives to a broad range of non-profit, industry, and government clients ...” As a self-professed Evangelical Christian, she is also well known for bridging the gap between scientists and Christians. Together with her husband, Andrew Farley, a pastor of the Church Without Religion, she wrote A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions. She was named by Christianity Today as one of their 50 women to watch.