Climate change affects everything from weather to the availability of natural resources to biodiversity to public policy. UCLA, which houses one of the world’s leading centers on environmental research, the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, and also the School of Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, has experts on the causes, environmental effects and policy implications of climate change. Click an expert’s name for a more detailed biography and contact information.
Science
J. David Neelin
Neelin is a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and an expert on global climate patterns and climate modeling. An atmospheric physicist, he contributed to reports by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Research Council on ocean-atmosphere-land interactions affecting climate.
Aradhna Tripati
Tripati is an assistant professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences who reconstructs Earth’s ancient climate record to discover the long-term effects of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a key contributor to global climate change. Based on techniques Tripati helped develop, she and her colleagues have been able to study carbon dioxide levels over the last 20 million years.
Alex Hall
Hall is a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and an expert on climate modeling, the mechanisms that govern Earth’s climate and the planet’s sensitivity to historical increases in greenhouse gas emissions. An atmospheric physicist, he contributed to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.
Environmental effects: biodiversity, conservation, water
Glen MacDonald
MacDonald is the John Muir Memorial Endowed Chair in Geography and an international authority on the history of climate change and the environmental effects of climate change and drought.
Brad Shaffer
Shaffer is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and an expert on biodiversity and conservation biology of amphibians and reptiles, with an emphasis on California conservation.
Tom Gillespie
Gillespie is a professor of geography and an expert on biodiversity whose research focuses on conservation and protection of endangered forests and species, primarily by using remote sensing via satellites to determine biodiversity to influence global conservation priorities.
Morgan Tingley
Tingley, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and a member of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, is an expert on the impact of climate change on biodiversity, with an emphasis on how animal and plant species adjust their activities in response to rising temperatures.
Dennis Lettenmaier
Lettenmaier is a distinguished professor of geography and one of the world’s foremost experts on water resources focusing especially on how water resources worldwide are affected by climate change.
Thomas Smith
Smith is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and an expert on the importance of biodiversity in plant and animal conservation. He studies practical and political means of supporting and funding Congo rainforest conservation, and also studies the spread of tropical diseases due to climate change.
Laurence Smith
Smith is a professor of geography and also Earth, planetary and space sciences and an expert on how climate change affects the melting ice in the Arctic, regularly traveling to Greenland to study the ice sheet.
Stephanie Pincetl
Pincetl is a professor in the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability with expertise in sustainability related to urban environments and land use. She is an authority on the political history of land use in California, environmental regulation, environmental politics and urban water issues.
Economy and business
Magali Delmas
Delmas is a professor in the UCLA Anderson School of Management who researches how environmental regulatory policies influence business strategies and performance, and what influences consumers to go green.
Environmental law and policy
Ann Carlson
Carlson, professor in the UCLA School of Law, is an authority on constitutional questions affecting environmental law and policy, including the division of regulatory authority between states and the federal government on greenhouse gas emissions.
Cara Horowitz
Horowitz is co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law an expert on legal and policy solutions to climate change and related environmental issues. She was formerly a staff attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Sean Hecht
Hecht is co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and an expert on environmental law and policy, including federal and state regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.
Ted Parson
Parson, a professor in the UCLA School of Law, is a leading expert on legal issues raised by climate engineering technologies. Parson has studied international environmental law and policy, the role of science and technology in policy-making and government regulation.
James Salzman
Salzman is the Donald Bren Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law and an expert on drinking water, trade and environment conflicts, policy design, and the legal and institutional issues in creating markets for ecosystem services.
Timothy Malloy
Malloy is a law professor who specializes in environmental laws and regulations with specific emphasis on how to craft regulations that prevent environmental harm and is faculty director of the interdisciplinary UCLA Sustainable Technology and Policy Program.
Kal Raustiala
Raustiala is a professor in the UCLA School of Law who specializes in international cooperation on regulatory issues. He has written extensively on the Kyoto Protocol international treaty on climate change.
History of environmentalism
Jon Christensen
Christensen adjunct assistant professor of History and an expert in the history of environmental science, environmental communications, environmental journalism, and solutions to combat climate change.
To find more faculty members with expertise, search the Media Guide to UCLA Experts.
