Richard C. J. Somerville

Richard C. J. Somerville is an internationally recognized climate scientist. He has been a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, since 1979. His interests include all aspects of climate, including climate science outreach and the interface between science and public policy. He is an expert on communicating clearly to the public what scientists have learned about climate change. He helped to organize the Aspen Global Change Institute in Aspen, Colorado. He is a Coordinating Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Among many honors, Somerville has been named a fellow of three scientific societies: the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and the American Meteorological Society (AMS). In 2022, he received the Haagen-Smit Clean Air Award for 2020-2021 from the California Air Resources Board, for a “lifetime of important contributions and achievements” in the field of climate change science.