Andrew Emory Dessler (born 1964) is a climate scientist. He is Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and Director of the Texas Center for Extreme Weather. His research subject areas include climate impacts, global climate physics, atmospheric chemistry, climate change and climate change policy.
Early life and education
Dessler was born in 1964, in Houston, Texas. He received a B.A. in
physics from
Rice University in 1986 and an M.A. and Ph.D. in
chemistry from Harvard University in 1990 and 1994.
His doctoral thesis was titled
In situ stratospheric ozone measurements.
[ Abstract.]
Career
After receiving a Ph.D. in 1994 from
Rice University, Dessler did two years of Postdoctoral research at
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and then spent nine years on the research faculty of the University of Maryland from 1996 to 2005.
Dessler went on to become an Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University from 2005 to 2007 and has been a tenured Professor of Atmospheric Sciences there since 2007.
[ Since 2022, he has been the Director of the Texas Center Extreme Weather, formerly the Texas Center for Climate Studies.]
Climate research
In 2004, The New York Times said the results of his 2004 article in the Journal of Climate written with Ken Minschwaner placed them, "in the middle between the skeptics and those who argue that warming caused by burning of fossil fuels could be extremely severe."
Later research, published in a 2009 article in Science showed "warming from rising carbon dioxide should also lead to increased water vapor and additional warming, doubling the warming effect of the carbon dioxide." according to Kenneth Chang of The New York Times.
In 2011, an article in The New York Times examining the theory that clouds might offset the effects of increased greenhouse gasses found that his analysis in a 2011 article in Geophysical Research Letters "offered some evidence that clouds will exacerbate the long-term planetary warming"[ Transcript of interview. August 14, 2012.] As a visiting scholar at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences in 2013 and 2014 he is undertaking a project titled, "Understanding long-term variations in stratospheric water vapor."
Public Policy
Dessler was a policy analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy for the final year of the Clinton administration.
DOE Climate Working Group response
On July 29, 2025, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) released a report entitled A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate
In response, Dessler and fellow climate scientist Robert Kopp led a group of more than 85 scientists to write a 434-page rebuttal[Dessler, Andrew E. and Kopp, Robert E. (editors) ] of the DOE document, which was submitted to the DOE, the EPA, and the National Academies. The rebuttal argued that the DOE report's principal conclusions—including claims that there are no significant trends in extreme weather and that carbon dioxide provides broad societal benefits—were misleading or incorrect. According to the rebuttal, the DOE report reached these conclusions through Cherry picking, emphasis on uncertainties, misrepresentation of peer-reviewed research, and dismissal of decades of established scientific findings.
Books
Dessler and Edward Parson co-authored, in 2006 (2nd ed. 2009). It was described It was described as, "a fascinating hybrid of science and policy directed at a broad or nonspecialist audience" by Wendy Gordon in a 2008 review in Eos. Gordon's review was positive concluding, "I could comfortably recommend this book to friend and colleagues." and that it would be "an excellent resource for a high school of college-level survey course in either environmental studies or public policy."
In 2012 Dessler wrote Introduction to Modern Climate Change "a textbook for non-science majors that uniquely immerses the reader in the science, impacts, economics, policies and political debate associated with climate change."
Awards and honors
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1991-1994 - NASA Graduate Student Fellowship in Global Change Research
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1993 - American Geophysical Union Atmospheric Sciences Section Outstanding Student Paper Award
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1994-1996 - National Research Council Research Associateship
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1999 - NASA New Investigator Award
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1999 - NASA Goddard Laboratory for Atmospheres Best Senior Author Publication Award
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2006 - Aldo Leopold Leadership Program Fellowship, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University
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2011 - Google Science Communication Fellow
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2011 - Texas A&M University Sigma Xi Outstanding Science Communicator Award
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2012 - Atmospheric Sciences Section Ascent Award, American Geophysical Union
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2012 - H. Burr Steinbach Visiting Scholar, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
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2012 - Thompson Lecturer, National Center for Atmospheric Research
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2014 - Louis J. Battan Author's Award, American Meteorological Society
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2017 - Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
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2019 - Fellow of the American Geophysical Union
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2021 - American Geophysical Union Climate Communication Award
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2022 - "Friend of the Planet" award from the National Center for Science Education (NCSE)
Selected Outreach
Dessler has engaged in public outreach through various channels, including social media, opinion editorials, and testimony before government bodies. His Substack newsletter is The Climate Brink, where he writes about climate science and energy.
Selected Talks and Podcasts
Publications
Books authored
Books co-authored
Selected articles
External links
