Alan Robock (born 1949) is an American climatologist. He is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University, New Jersey.
Life and work
Robock has a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin (1970), a S.M. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1974) and a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1977) in
Meteorology under advisor Edward Norton Lorenz.
In 2011, he and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, among others, were part of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences panel, to discuss and advise the Roman Curia on climate engineering.
Research
Robock has researched
nuclear winter,
[
][
][
][
] the Toba catastrophe theory,
the little ice age, the effect of volcanic eruptions on climate,
hydrology, human impacts of climate change, regional
atmosphere-
hydrology modeling, and geoengineering. In 2022, an analysis led by Lili Xia and Alan Robock of Rutgers University quantified the effects of nuclear war on global food production in the journal
Nature Food. The study estimates that with their current number of warheads, a nuclear war between the US and Russia could generate 150 million tons of soot, thanks to massive fires ignited by explosions. The soot would quickly cover the globe and block incoming sunlight, creating the equivalent of a shade and causing drastic global cooling. Crops and livestock would wither and die in the cold and dark. The research concludes that nuclear winter could result in an estimated 5 billion deaths from famine if global calorie production drops by 90 percent.
Honors
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Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, 1998.
[" List of Fellows", American Meteorological Society. Retrieved May 28, 2017.]
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Participant in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, 2007.
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American Meteorological Society Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer, 2008-2009.
[" Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturers, 2008-2009", Sigma Xi. Retrieved January 29, 2019.]
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Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2008.
[" AAAS Fellows", American Association for the Advancement of Science. Retrieved March 22, 2018.]
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Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, 2011.
[" For important contributions to understanding the global climate system, including the climate impacts of soil moisture, of snow and ice, and of stratospheric aerosols.", American Geophysical Union. Retrieved March 22, 2018.]
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Jule G. Charney Award 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."
[" Alan Robock Wins Prestigious American Meteorological Society Award", (November 24, 2014). Rutgers University. Retrieved May 28, 2017.]
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2022 Future of Life Award (Nuclear Winter)
External links
