The following Oregon State University faculty members have expertise related to climate change and are willing to speak with journalists. Their specific expertise, and contact information, is listed below. For help with other OSU faculty experts, contact Sean Nealon, 541-737-0787, [email protected].

Agriculture

John Antle, 541-737-1425, [email protected]

Antle is an economist, a professor in the College of Agricultural Sciences and a university fellow at Resources for the Future in Washington, D.C. He was a lead and contributing author to the third and fourth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has expertise in:

  • production economics
  • agricultural development
  • technology impact assessment

Climate analysis

Christopher Daly, 541-737-2531, [email protected]

Daly is a professor in the College of Engineering and director of the PRISM Climate Group. He pioneered an emerging discipline known as “geospatial climatology,” the study of the spatial and temporal patterns of climate and their relationships with the Earth’s surface. Since the mid 1990s, Daly has worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which adopted PRISM-created temperature maps in 2012 as the basis for plant hardiness zones. In collaboration with the Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering, PRISM provides spatial weather and climate data to the U.S. Crop Insurance Program.

Erica Fleishman, 805-291-6258, [email protected]

Fleishman is director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute and a professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. Her research focuses on ecological responses to variability and changes in climate and land use in the western United States.  She can discuss:

  • Interactions among fire dynamics and natural and human environmental change.
  • Challenges and opportunities that fire presents to resource management.
  • Ecological adaptations to fire.
  • Connections between climate change and frequency and severity of droughts.
  • Changes in precipitation, snowpack and snowpack melt.

Philip Mote, 541-737-1458, [email protected]

Mote is vice provost and dean of the Graduate School. He is a professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and was founding director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute until 2019. He has served as a lead author for the Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on three U.S. National Climate Assessments and seven reports of the National Academy of Sciences. He remains involved in communicating climate science within Oregon. His expertise includes:

  • regional climate modeling
  • citizen science
  • the influence of climate change on western U.S. snowpack
  • extreme weather events and the influences of both natural and human factors on their likelihood

In addition, he can speak broadly about global and Northwest climate change, its impacts and how people are adjusting to the changes.

Nick Siler, 5410737-8633, [email protected]

Siler is Oregon’s Associate State Climatologist and an assistant professor of Atmospheric Science in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. He has expertise in:

  • Mountain precipitation and snowpack
  • Regional impacts of El Nino, La Nina, and other sources of seasonal climate variability
  • Extreme rainfall and flooding
  • Drought
  • Impacts of climate change on all the above

Community decision-making

Elizabeth Marino, 541-322-2055, [email protected]

Marino is an associate professor of anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts at OSU-Cascades in Bend. She studies the cultural impacts of state and federal relocation policies implemented in response to repetitive flooding associated with sea level rise, storms and other factors. With support from the National Science Foundation, she leads a multiyear project to evaluate flood response policies from economic, historical and cultural perspectives. She and her colleagues will focus on the Inupiat community of Shishmaref in Alaska. Her book Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground: An Ethnography of Climate Change in Shishmaref, Alaska was published in 2015 by the University of Alaska Press. 

Earth climate history

Ed Brook, 541-737-8197, [email protected]

Brook is a distinguished professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. As a leader in international ice core drilling, he and his team conduct polar expeditions and evaluate ice core-based biogeochemical evidence of past climates. He is recognized for developing precise analytical methods to determine concentrations trace atmospheric gases in ice cores. He was a lead author for the U.S. Global Change Research Program Synthesis and Assessment Product on Abrupt Climate Change and is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has expertise in: 

  • the history of atmospheric greenhouse gases
  • past climate change
  • ice core reconstructions of past environments

Alan Mix, 541-737-5212, [email protected]

Mix is a distinguished professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. He is the founder and director of the Stable Isotope Laboratory, which uses differences in the forms of chemical elements to study environmental processes. He is a lead author on the upcoming sixth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and The Explorers Club.  Mix has expertise in:

  • climate and environmental change
  • paleoceanography and paleoclimatology
  • geochemistry
  • micropaleontology

Energy

Bryson Robertson, 541-737-8286, [email protected]

Robertson is an associate professor in the College of Engineering and codirector of the Pacific Marine Energy Center. His research focuses on wave, tidal and offshore wind energy. He has expertise in:

  • global energy systems
  • decarbonization of electrical systems
  • social, technological and economic transition in power systems

Ethics

Allen Thompson, 541-737-5654, [email protected]

Thompson is an associate professor of philosophy in the College of Liberal Arts. His interests include environmental philosophy (ethics, metaphysics and aesthetics), philosophical ethics, social and political philosophy and practical reason. He coedited Ethical Adaptation to Climate Change and the Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics. His recent publications have focused on forward-looking conceptions of human natural goodness and re-visioning moral responsibility for managing ecosystems under global climate change.

Global trends

William J. Ripple, 541-737-3056, [email protected]

Ripple is a distinguished professor of ecology and director of the Trophic Cascades Program in the College of Forestry. He studies the consequences of predator abundance and reintroductions on ecosystems and has conducted studies in Yellowstone, Zion, Olympic and Yosemite national parks. He is the lead author of one of the most widely shared scientific articles of the past decade, according to Altmetric, “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice,” as well as “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency.” His expertise includes:

  • vegetative responses to the presence or absence of top predators 
  • the use of remote sensing in analysis and conservation of vertebrate wildlife
  • global environmental and climate trend analyses

Human dimensions

David Wrathall, 541-737-8051 (office) and 831-two-three-nine-8521 (cell), [email protected]

Wrathall is an associate professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. He focuses on risk and resilience, climate change adaptation, human migration and political ecology. He is a lead author on the sixth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on the chapter Poverty, Livelihoods and Sustainable Development. He has expertise in:

  • environmental change and human migration
  • integrated analysis of social, economic and environmental data

Human health

Jeff Bethel, 541-737-3832, [email protected]

Bethel is an associate professor in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences. His research focuses on the health impact of occupational, environmental and natural hazards, particularly among vulnerable populations. He studies the health effects of climate change, including heat-related illness among farmworkers and other groups. Other areas of expertise include:

  • household- and community-level preparedness to disasters
  • the health impact of disasters
  • efforts to increase adaptive capacity for climate change among local health departments

Oceans

Jack Barth, 541-737- 1607, [email protected]

Barth is the executive director of OSU’s Marine Studies Initiative and a professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. He studies coastal ocean dynamics and changing ocean conditions and has been interviewed by reporters on ocean dead zones, underwater gliders and other topics. His expertise includes:

  • ocean processes that influence low-oxygen conditions
  • coastal oceanography and marine ecosystems
  • the Ocean Observatories Initiative

Peter Clark, 541-737-1247, [email protected]

Clark is a distinguished professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. He has coordinated reports for the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, the National Science Foundation, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, focusing on abrupt climate change and sea-level change. He has expertise in:

  • glaciers and ice sheets
  • sea-level change
  • abrupt climate change
  • paleoclimatology

Andreas Schmittner, 541-737-2659, [email protected]u

Schmittner is a professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. He studies ocean circulation and how it interacts with climate. His areas of expertise include:

  • ocean circulation modeling
  • historical ocean circulation
  • natural and human influences on circulation