Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist. She studies climate change, one of the most pressing issues we face today. 

She doesn’t accept global warming on faith: she crunches the data, analyzes the models, and helsp engineers and city managers and ecologists quantify the impacts. 

The data tells her the planet is warming; the science is clear that humans are responsible; the impacts we’re seeing today are already serious; and our future is in our hands. As John Holdren once said, “We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. We’re going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be. The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required, and the less suffering there will be.” 

Today, Hayhoe is a climate scientist, a professor in the Department of Political Science, a director of the Climate Center, and an associate in the Public Health program of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Texas Tech University. She is also a principal investigator for the Department of Interior’s South-Central Climate Adaptation Science Center.  

Hayhoe’s research currently focuses on establishing a scientific basis for assessing the regional to local-scale impacts of climate change on human systems and the natural environment. To this end, she analyzes observations, compares future scenarios, evaluates global and regional climate models, builds and assesses statistical downscaling models, and constantly strives to develop better ways of translating climate projections into information relevant to agriculture, ecosystems, energy, infrastructure, public health, and water resources. 

Hayhoe is also the founder and CEO of ATMOS Research, where they bridge the gap between scientists and stakeholders to provide relevant, state-of-the-art information on how climate change will affect our lives to a broad range of non-profit, industry and government clients. 

Together with her husband Andrew Farley, Katharine wrote A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions, a book that untangles the complex science and tackles many long-held misconceptions about global warming.