Past Distinguished Lectures

1998

Joyce Penner, University of Michigan
Climate Change and Radiative Forcing by Anthropogenic Aerosols: A Summary of Current Understanding

Cort Wilmott, University of Delaware
Spatially Interpolating and Mapping Climate Fields from Lousy Weather-Station Networks

2000

David Anderson, European Centre For Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
Seasonal Forecasting at the ECMWF

Roger Pielke Jr., National Center for Atmospheric Research
Seasonal Climate Forecasts: Opportunities for and Obstacles to Use in Decision Making

Jim Rustad, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Molecular Simulation Of Chemistry At Complex Mineral-Water Interfaces

2001

Roger Kennedy, US National Park Service
The Abrasion of Human and Natural Systems: Fire, Flood, Risk and Responsibility

2002

Michael Bender, Princeton University
An Absolute Age Scale for the Vostok Ice Core: Implications for the Role of Milankovitch Forcing of Glacial-Interglacial Climate Change

Christopher Green, McGill University
Stabilizing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide: What will it take?

James Holton, University of Washington
The Tropical Tropopause Layer, the Quasibiennial Oscillation, and Stratospheric Dehydration

Dennis Lettenmaier, University of Washington
Implications of Hydrologic Variability and Change for Western Water Management

Andrew Revkin, New York Times
The Daily Planet: Why the Media Stumble over the Environment

Carl Wunsch, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A Revisionist View of the Milankovitch Hypothesis for Climate Change

2003

Richard Alley, Pennsylvania State University
Looking back to our future: Is the IPCC optimistic on climate change?

Thure Cerling, University of Utah
Welcome to the C4-World: Ecological Change and Evolution in the Neogene

Inez Fung, University of California Berkeley
Carbon-Climate Interactions: A Contemporary View

Claude Jaupart, Inst. de Physique du Globe de Paris
Physical Controls on Volcanic Eruptions

Daniel Sarewitz, Columbia University
Science, Values, and Climate Change: Probing the Limits of Objectivity

2004

Tanya Atwater, University of California, Santa Barbara
A Half-Billion Years of Plate Tectonics in the Western United States, or How the West Was Made

Wallace Broecker, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Sea Ice and Global Climate

Dianne Dumanoski, Former writer for the Boston Globe
Author of Our Stolen Future
Understanding the Planetary Emergency as a "Human Crisis"

Kerry Emanuel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A Simple Model of Multiple Climate Regimes

Philip England, University of Oxford
The Viscosity of the Continents

Paul Gipe, Ontario Sustainable Energy Association
Overview of Worldwide Wind Energy Development

Daniel Kevles, Yale University
Patenting Life: Innovation and Controversy in the Political Economy of Patent Law

V. Ramanathan, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Asian Brown Cloud

William Ruddiman, University of Virginia
The Anthropogenic Greenhouse Era Began Thousands of Years Ago

Jeff Severinghaus, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
How air bubbles trapped in glacial ice have changed our view of abrupt climate change

2005

Myles Allen, University of Oxford
How much carbon can we afford to emit?

Bernard Hallet, University of Washington
Self-Organization in Landscapes

Lucile Jones, United States Geological Survey
The Politics of Earthquake Prediction

Meghan Miller, Central Washington University
GPS constraints on seismic hazard in the Pacific Northwest

Michael Tjernström, Stockholm University
So, what's so special about Arctic clouds?

James C. Zachos, University of California
A Rapid Rise in Greenhouse Gas Concentrations 55 Million Years Ago: Lessons for the Future

2006

Steve Boyes, University of KwaZulu-Natal
The Okavango Delta - Africa's Wetland Wilderness

Amanda Lynch
A factorial analysis of storm surge flooding in Barrow, Alaska: an adaptation study

George Philander, Princeton University
State of Fear the Day After Tomorrow? (A Geological Perspective on Global Warming)

Walter Pitman, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory
Evidence for and Implications of the Black Sea Noah's Flood: Geology, Archaeology, Language and Myth

Lonnie Thompson, Byrd Polar Research Center/ The Ohio State University
Glaciological Evidence of Abrupt Tropical Climate Change: Past, Present and Future

2007

Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, Niels Bohr Institute,
Greenland Ice Cores tell tales on the Eemian Period and beyond

Prasad Gogineni, Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets
Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging of Ice-bed Interface and Radar Sounding of Fast-Flowing Glaciers

Stefan Hastenrath, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Variations of East African climate, glaciers and lakes over the past two centuries

Stephen Hickman, U.S. Geological Survey
Structure and Properties of the San Andreas Fault at Seismogenic Depths: Recent Results from the SAFOD Experiment

Gerald North, Texas A&M University
Climate Change over the Last Thousand Years and the Next Hundred

John Wallace
Year-to-year Variability and Long-term Trends in the Circulation over High Latitudes

2008

Kerry Emanuel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hurricanes in the Climate System

Mark Z. Jacobson, Stanford University
Air Pollution Effects of and a Renewable-Energy Solution to Global Warming

Gerard Roe, University of Washington
The shape of things to come: what are the limits to global climate predictions?

Susan Solomon, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
A world of change: Climate yesterday, today, and tomorrow

2009

Raymond Bradley
Climate System Research Center, Dept of Geosciences
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Recent Climatic Change and Deglacierization of the Tropics

Greg Carmichael
Department of Chemical & Biochemical Engineering, The University of Iowa
What Goes Around Comes Around: The globalization of air pollution and the implications for the quality of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat

Steve Rayner
Oxford University, United Kingdom
The Problem of Uncomfortable Knowledge in Science Policy Debates

Alan Robock, Rutgers University
Smoke and Mirrors: Is Geoengineering a Solution to Global Warming?

2010

Mike Hulme, University of East Anglia (UEA)
Why We Disagree About Climate Change

Daniel Jacob, Harvard University
Mercury in the environment: where does it come from, where does it go?

Peter B. Kelemen, Arthur D. Storke Professor of Geochemistry in Columbia University's Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, based at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory
In situ mineral carbonation in peridotite for geological capture and storage of CO2

Andrew Revkin, Pace University
Are We Stuck With "Blah, Blah, Blah Bang"?

2011

David Goldston, U.S. Natural Resources Defense Council
Loving Science to Death: Problems at the Intersection of Science and Policy

Peter Rhines, University of Washington
Exploring the Cold Oceans of the North

Brian Toon, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder
The Anti-Greenhouse Effect along the Spiral of Geologic Time

Peter Webster, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology
Probability, Prediction and Decisions: A Pathway to the alleviation of poverty in the developing world

2012

Issac M. Held, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Global Simulations of Tropical Cyclone Statistics, Interannual variability and the response to global warming

Christopher Landsea
Hurricanes and Global Warming: Expectations Versus Observations
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Diana Liverman, Co-director of the Institute of the Environment at The University of Arizona,
Regents Professor in the School of Geography and Development
Responding to the challenges of global environmental change: carbon offsets, climate adaptation, and science for sustainable development

David Randall, Colorado State University
A University Perspective on Climate Modeling
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A Tribute to Dr. George Reid presented by Dr. Susan Solomon

2013

Christina Ravelo, University of California, Santa Cruz
Do Tropical Conditions Determine Climate Sensitivity? Lessons from the Warm Pliocene

Richard Seager, Columbia University Palisades
The Dust Bowl and Other Great North American Droughts of the Past, Present, and Future

Steven Wofsy, Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Science/Department of Earth and Planetary Science
Greenhouse Gases Across Time and Space, from the Global Scale to the Urban Dome

Mark D. Zoback, Stanford University
The Opportunities and Challenges of Shale Gas Development