Donald J. Wuebbles, PhD
Director of Climate Science

Dr. Don Wuebbles, as Earth Knowledge’s Director of Climate Science, focuses on bringing world-class science to our Climate Downscaling Scenarios, Digital Twin of the Earth, and Indicators.

Don shares the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for Climate Change and is a lead author on numerous Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. He also served as assistant director, Office of Science & Technology, Executive Office of the President 2014-2016.

Don is an expert in atmospheric physics and chemistry, involved with over 500 scientific publications related to the Earth’s climate, air quality and stratospheric ozone layer. He has co-authored numerous international and national scientific assessments, including being a coordinating lead author on several international climate assessments led by the IPCC, which resulted in IPCC being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Don was a leader in both the 2013 IPCC international assessment of climate science and the 2014 3rd US National Climate Assessment. More recently, he co-led the first volume of the 4th US National Climate Assessment published in November 2017, which assesses the science of climate change and its effects on the US, as required by the US Congress under the 1990 Global Change Act. He also co-authored Volume 2 of the 4th US National Climate Assessment, released in November 2018. He led a new assessment on the impacts of climate change on the Great Lakes, which was published in March 2019.

Don has received several major awards, including the Cleveland Abbe Award from the American Meteorological Society, the Stratospheric Ozone Protection Award from the US Environmental Protection Agency, and, in December 2018, received the Bert Bolin Global Environmental Change Award from the American Geophysical Union. He is a fellow of three major professional science societies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society.

Don has two degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois (1970, 1972) and a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of California, Davis (1983).