2025-2026 Lecturer: Alan Robock

Alan Robock

Rutgers University

Biography

 Dr. Alan Robock is a Distinguished Professor of climate science in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University.  He graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1970 with a B.A. in Meteorology, and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an S.M. in 1974 and Ph.D. in 1977, both in Meteorology.  Before graduate school, he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines.  He was a professor at the University of Maryland, 1977-1997, and the State Climatologist of Maryland, 1991-1997, before coming to Rutgers in 1998.  Prof. Robock has published more than 500 articles on his research in the area of climate change, including more than 290 peer-reviewed papers.  His areas of expertise include climate intervention (also called geoengineering), and the climatic effects of nuclear war and volcanic eruptions.  He is the co-founder and co-leader of the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP).  He serves as Editor of Reviews of Geophysics, the most highly-cited journal in the Earth Sciences.  His honors include being a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a recipient of the AMS Jule Charney Medal.  Prof. Robock was a Lead Author of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007).  In 2017 the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its groundbreaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons” based partly on the work of Prof. Robock.  In 2022, Prof. Robock was a winner of the Future of Life Award, “For reducing the risk of nuclear war by developing and popularizing the science of nuclear winter.”  In June 2025 he published a book by Owen Brian Toon and himself, Earth in Flames: How an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs, and How We Can Avoid a Similar Fate From Nuclear Winter, Oxford University Press, ISBN: 9780197799703. 


Abstract: Global Famine after Nuclear War

   While nuclear weapons make many of us think of horrific immediate destruction, what we don’t consider as often is the profound climate transformation that could turn fertile regions into barren wastelands. The world as we know it could end any day as a result of an accidental nuclear war between the United States and Russia. The fires produced by attacks on cities and industrial areas would generate smoke that would blow around the world, persist for years, and block out sunlight, producing a nuclear winter. Because temperatures would plunge below freezing, crops would die and massive starvation could kill most of humanity. Even a nuclear war between new nuclear states, such as India and Pakistan, could produce climate change unprecedented in recorded human history and massive disruptions to the world’s food supply. This talk will discuss climate and crop model simulations that support this theory. The theory cannot be tested in the real world, but the fate of the dinosaurs, volcanic eruptions, urban fires during World War II, and forest fires all serve as analogs that support the theory. By highlighting these risks and the ongoing international efforts to prevent such scenarios, this lecture aims to inform and inspire action towards a more secure global future.