PROFILE AND STATEMENT
OF PETER C. FRUMHOFF, PhD
I am Dr. Peter C. Frumhoff. I am the Director of Science and Policy and Chief
Climate Scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). As such, I guide
organizational-wide strategies to bring robust scientific expertise to bear on
strengthening public understanding and public policies, develop new cross-program
science and policy initiatives, and serve as senior liaison with the scientific
community, policymakers, and the media. As a global change ecologist, I have
published and lectured widely on climate science and policy, the climate
responsibilities of fossil fuel companies, the energy-water-climate nexus, and the
conservation and management of tropical forests and biological diversity.
I also serve on the board of atmospheric sciences and climate of the US
National Academy of Sciences, the board of directors of the American Wind
Wildlife Institute, the steering committee for the Center for Science and Democracy
at UCS, and the board of editors of Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene.
Previously, I served on the Advisory Committee on Climate Change and Natural
Resource Science at the US Department of Interior, and the board of editors of
Ecological Applications.
I was also a lead author of the Fourth Assessment Report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 2007, lead author of the 2000 IPCC Special Report on Land Use,
Land-use Change and Forestry, and Chair of the 2007 Northeast Climate Impacts
Assessment (NECIA).
In 2014, I was a Cox Visiting Professor in the School of Earth Sciences at
Stanford University. Previously, I taught at the Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy, Harvard University and the University of Maryland, and was a AAAS
Science and Diplomacy Fellow at the US Agency for International Development. I
am also a non-faculty associate of the Harvard University Center for the
Environment.
My work is cited frequently in print and electronic media and I have testified
before the U.S. Congress on multiple occasions. I received my PhD in ecology and
MA in zoology from the University of California at Davis, and a B.A. in psychology
from the University of California at San Diego.
I was invited by Ms. Desiree Llanos Dee, Climate Justice Campaigner of
Greenpeace Southeast Asia (Philippines), one of the petitioners in the human rights
and climate change case, to be a witness and resource person for the petitioners to
speak present findings of a recent study that I co-authored, entitled “The rise in
global atmospheric CO2, surface temperature and sea level from emissions traced