Raymond Thomas Pierrehumbert is the Halley Professor of Physics at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

. Previously, he was Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

. He was a lead author on the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC ( Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and a co-author of the

National Research Council National Research Council may refer to: * National Research Council (Canada), sponsoring research and development * National Research Council (Italy), scientific and technological research, Rome * National Research Council (United States), part of ...

report on

abrupt climate change An abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to transition at a rate that is determined by the climate system energy-balance, and which is more rapid than the rate of change of the external forcing, though it may include sud ...

Education and awards

He earned a degree in Physics (A.B) from Harvard College and a PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996, which was used to launch collaborative work on the climate of early Mars with collaborators in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. He is a Fellow of the

American Geophysical Union The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists and enthusiasts that according to their website includes 130,000 people (not members). AGU's a ...

(AGU) and has been named Chevalier de l'

Ordre des Palmes Académiques A suite, in Western classical music and jazz, is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral/ concert band pieces. It originated in the late 14th century as a pairing of dance tunes and grew in scope to comprise up to five dances, sometimes with ...

by the

Republic of France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area e ...

. He was elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

in 2015 and sits on the Science and Security Board of the ''

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists The ''Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists'' is a nonprofit organization concerning science and global security issues resulting from accelerating technological advances that have negative consequences for humanity. The ''Bulletin'' publishes conte ...

''. In 2020, Pierrehumbert was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemat ...

Research

Pierrehumbert's central research interest is how

climate Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologi ...

works as a system and developing idealized mathematical models to be used to address questions of climate science such as how the earth kept from freezing over: the

faint young sun paradox The faint young Sun paradox or faint young Sun problem describes the apparent contradiction between observations of liquid water early in Earth's history and the astrophysical expectation that the Sun's output would be only 70 percent as intense ...

. Pierrehumbert contributes to

RealClimate ''RealClimate'' is a commentary site (blog) on climatology. The site's contributors include climate scientists whose goal is to provide a response to developing stories and a context they feel is sometimes missing in mainstream commentary o ...

and is a strong critic of

solar geoengineering Solar geoengineering, or solar radiation modification (SRM), is a type of climate engineering in which sunlight (solar radiation) would be reflected back to outer space to limit or reverse human-caused climate change. It is not a substitute for ...

research.

Personal life

Pierrehumbert is married to

Janet Pierrehumbert Janet Pierrehumbert (b. 1954) is Professor of Language Modelling in the Oxford e-Research Centre at the University of Oxford and a senior research fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. She developed an intonational model which includes a grammar ...

, professor of Language Modeling at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

Selected papers

* Pierrehumbert R.T. 2002:
The Hydrologic Cycle in Deep Time Climate Problems
, ''Nature'', 419, 191–198. * Pierrehumbert R.T. 2003: "Counting the Cost", ''Nature'', 422 (6929), 263. * Goodman, J.C. and R.T. Pierrehumbert 2003:
Glacial flow of floating marine ice in Snowball Earth
, ''J. Geophys. Res.'', 108 (C10), 3308, . * Alley R.B., J. Marotzke, W.D. Nordhaus, J.T. Overpeck, D.M. Peteet, R.A. Pielke Jr., R.T. Pierrehumbert, P.B. Rhines, T.F. Stocker, L. Talley and J.M. Wallace, 2003:
Abrupt Climate Change
, ''Science'', 299, 2005–2010. * Pierrehumbert, R.T. 2004:

, ''Nature'', 429, 646–649. * Pierrehumbert, R.T. 2004:
Warming the world: Greenhouse effect: Fourier’s concept of planetary energy balance is still relevant today
. ''Nature'', 432, 677. * Pierrehumbert, R.T. 2005:
Climate dynamics of a hard snowball Earth
, ''J. Geophys. Res.'', 110 (D01111), .

References

External links

UChicago homepage

Google Scholar page
Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of Chicago faculty American geophysicists Environmental bloggers MIT School of Engineering alumni Statutory Professors of the University of Oxford Fellows of the American Geophysical Union Fellows of Jesus College, Oxford Fellows of the Royal Society Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Harvard College alumni {{climate-bio-stub