About

Alan Robock is a Distinguished Professor in the Atmospheric Science Group within the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University. He holds a B.A. in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin (1970), and both an S.M. (1974) and a Ph.D. (1977) in Meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His doctoral advisor was Edward N. Lorenz, a prominent figure in meteorology. Professor Robock is the Co-Director of the Rutgers Impact Studies of Climate Intervention (RISCI) lab and is actively involved in multiple academic programs including the Undergraduate Meteorology Program, the Graduate Program in Atmospheric Science, and the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute. He also serves as the editor of the journal Reviews of Geophysics, which has a 2024 impact factor of 37.3, and has previously chaired the AGU College of Fellows. His current research interests focus on nuclear winter, climate intervention (geoengineering), the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP), and the effects of volcanic eruptions on climate. Professor Robock has contributed extensively to understanding the climatic consequences of nuclear conflict and the potential for geoengineering to address climate change. He has produced numerous educational resources including PowerPoint presentations and videos on topics such as global famine after nuclear war, geoengineering, volcanic eruptions, and global warming. His work also includes public outreach through op-eds, blogs, and talks aimed at raising awareness about nuclear winter and climate intervention. His commitment to advancing knowledge in atmospheric sciences is reflected in his leadership roles, research contributions, and educational efforts.

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Climatology
• Geography
• Biology
• Economics
• Geology
• Oceanography
• Ecology
• Archaeology
• Environmental protection
• Agricultural economics
• Atmospheric sciences
• Business
• Earth science
• Physics
• Law
• Paleontology
• Law and economics
• International trade
• Natural resource economics
• Meteorology
• Database

Selected publications

• Potential Impacts of Climate Interventions on Marine Ecosystems

  Reviews of Geophysics · 2026-01-14 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Rising global temperatures pose significant risks to marine ecosystems, biodiversity, and fisheries. Recent comprehensive assessments suggest that large‐scale mitigation efforts to limit warming are falling short, and all feasible future climate projections, including those that represent optimistic emissions reductions, exceed the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C or 2° warming targets during this century. While avoiding further CO 2 emissions remains the most effective way to prevent environmental destabilization, interest is growing in climate interventions—deliberate, large‐scale manipulations of the environment aimed at reducing global warming. These include carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to reduce atmospheric CO 2 concentrations over time, and solar radiation modification (SRM), which reflects sunlight to lower surface temperatures but does not address root CO 2 causes. The effects of these interventions on marine ecosystems, both direct and in combination with ongoing climate change, remain highly uncertain. Given the ocean's central role in regulating Earth's climate and supporting global food security, understanding these potential effects is crucial. This review provides an overview of proposed intervention methodologies for marine CDR and SRM and outlines the potential trade‐offs and knowledge gaps associated with their impacts on marine ecosystems. Climate interventions have the potential to reduce warming‐driven impacts, but could also alter marine food systems, biodiversity and ecosystem function. Effects will vary by pathway, scale, and regional context. Pathway‐specific impact assessments are thus crucial to quantify trade‐offs between plausible intervention scenarios as well as to identify their expected impacts on marine ecosystems in order to prioritize scaling efforts for low‐risk pathways and avoid high‐risk scenarios.

  PublisherDOI

• Persistent stratospheric cold-season aerosols from the 1783 Laki eruption produced winter warming over Northern Eurasia

  Communications Earth & Environment · 2026-01-14

  articleOpen access

  Northern Eurasia tropospheric winter warming has been observed and modeled after major tropical volcanic eruptions. Here we show that a high-latitude eruption with a persistent stratospheric volcanic cloud from summer to early winter can also trigger winter warming. Our model simulations, incorporating updated volcanic forcing for the 1783 Laki eruption, closely align with two recent temperature reconstructions—whereas simulations of other eruptions lacking substantial cold-season aerosol loadings fail to produce such warming. The aerosol-induced mid-latitude stratospheric warming strengthens the meridional temperature gradient, enhances the polar vortex, and shifts both horizontal and vertical energy redistribution in favor of Northern Eurasia winter warming. Neutral or cold winters, nevertheless, remain possible in individual realizations due to internal variability. These findings help resolve model-observation discrepancies and highlight the crucial role of stratosphere-troposphere coupling in shaping large-scale circulation patterns in the aftermath of volcanic eruptions. The 1783 Laki eruption triggered Northern Eurasia tropospheric winter warming due to a persistent cold-season stratospheric aerosol cloud. Climate model simulations, accounting for the multi-episode nature of the eruption, were validated by observational reconstructions of the climate response.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Finalizing Experimental Protocols for the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP) Contribution to CMIP7

  Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society · 2025-08-21 · 4 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Are You Being Targeted with a Nuclear Weapon?

  2025-04-15

  book-chapterSenior author

  Abstract Maps are shown of the likely military targets for nuclear weapons in the United States, Russia, and Europe. Military targets include more than military bases and missile silos. Refineries, oil storage, power plants, commercial airports, military-supporting industries, commercial harbors, railyards, national laboratories, and government centers are also likely targets. The law of war is vague, and while you can’t say a city is a target, you can still attack it as an economic or military occupied target. Even strategies involving military targets likely involve attacks on many urban areas due to the large areas impacted. About one-third of Earth’s population lives in nuclear-free zones. Many people are concerned about whether they live near a target or a nuclear weapon. This is indeed a concern, but everyone on Earth would suffer from nuclear winter and the resulting famine even if no bombs are dropped near them.

  PublisherDOI

• Assured Destruction by Nuclear Explosions

  2025-04-15

  book-chapterSenior author

  Abstract Military targeting considers “assured destruction” the destruction in the least favorable circumstances for creating damage. Assured destruction only considers casualties from radiation and blast, which are sure to occur and could kill hundreds of millions of people. The fires set by nuclear weapons can cause many more deaths but are ignored because it is argued that it is uncertain what fuel will be present or burn. However, fuel is widely distributed and the area where blast waves may bury fuel in rubble is small compared with the area that may burn. Thus, current policies and strategies are inconsistent with the law of war because the area of assured destruction is likely much smaller than the area of collateral damage due to fire and because the effects of smoke on global climate and food supplies could kill ten times more people than might die from blast and radiation.

  PublisherDOI

• Global and regional thermosteric and dynamic sea level change under stratospheric aerosol injection

  Environmental Research Climate · 2025-10-21

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Sea level rise (SLR) is a global concern in the era of climate change, prompting the exploration of interventions such as solar radiation modification through stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). This intervention could affect the physical system in various ways. The present study analyzes the global and regional impacts of SAI using ARISE-SAI-1.5 (SAI-1.5) simulations with the Community Earth System Model 2. We calculated the regional thermosteric sea level under different scenarios. After validating our methodology for sea level components over the period 1995–2014, we determined changes in sea level variables under both SAI-1.5 and the underlying Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 2–4.5 (SSP2-4.5) relative to the reference period (1995–2014). In contrast to sea surface temperature, which under this SAI strategy should be maintained near 1.5 °C above preindustrial values, global SLR would continue increasing under SAI-1.5. However, SAI would significantly impact thermal expansion in SSP2-4.5 simulations, reducing the global long-term sea level trend from 3.7 ± 0.03 mm yr −1 for SSP2-4.5–1.9 ± 0.04 mm yr −1 for SAI-1.5, a 49% reduction. The associated ocean heat content is reduced from (2.0 ± 0.3) × 10 22 J yr −1 under SSP2-4.5 to (1.17 ± 0.30) × 10 22 J yr −1 under SAI, a 42% reduction. Additionally, SAI would impact the regional and global ocean by reducing the SLR rate. These findings underscore the potential of SAI as a climate intervention strategy with significant implications for sea level change.

  PublisherDOI

• Stratospheric aerosol climate intervention could reduce crop nutritional value

  Environmental Research Letters · 2025-11-01

  articleOpen access

  Abstract The deliberate addition of sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere to form reflective sulfate aerosols, reflect sunlight, and reduce surface temperatures is increasingly being considered as an option for minimizing the impacts of climate change. This strategy would create an unprecedented climate where the relationship between surface temperature and carbon dioxide concentration is decoupled. The implications of stratospheric aerosol intervention (SAI) for global crop protein concentrations have not yet been explored. While elevated CO 2 concentrations are expected to reduce crop protein, higher temperatures may increase crop protein concentrations. Here we report changes of maize, rice, soybean, and wheat protein concentrations under a medium emissions climate change scenario and a SAI scenario to maintain global average temperatures at 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels, as simulated by three global gridded crop models. We show that using SAI to offset surface temperature increases would create decreases in the global protein concentrations of maize and rice, with minimal impact on wheat and soybean. Some already protein-deficient and malnourished nations that rely heavily on these crops to meet protein demands would show large decreases in protein intake under SAI with the current diet pattern, which could exacerbate their nutrient scarcity. The range of results between crop models highlights the need for a more comprehensive analysis using additional crop models, climate models, a broader range of climate intervention scenarios, and advancements in crop models to better represent protein responses to climate changes.

  PublisherDOI

• The Power of Asteroids and Comets

  2025-04-15

  book-chapterSenior author

  Abstract The forces propelling asteroids and comets to their high energies originated with the solar system’s formation. This chapter discusses why comets and asteroids have such high velocities and why comets travel faster than asteroids. The probability of asteroid impacts as a function of size and energy is known. One hits Earth with the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb nearly every year. Little more than a decade ago, an asteroid disintegrated over Russia with the energy of a large thermonuclear weapon, injuring 1000 people, while little more than a century ago another asteroid blew apart over Russia releasing an energy larger than any weapon in current arsenals, knocking down a forest the size of a small city. NASA now has a program to detect asteroids and comets before they hit Earth, but eventually Earth will be hit by a city killer—and possibly an object with damaging global effects.

  PublisherDOI

• Accessible Climate and Impact Model Output for Studying the Human and Environmental Impacts of Nuclear Conflict

  2025-10-03 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Nuclear winter refers to the suite of physical and biological consequences that may follow nuclear conflict, particularly the cooling and darkening of Earth's surface due to black carbon soot in the upper atmosphere. While the associated changes in temperature, precipitation, and food system productivity have been the subject of climate modelling for decades, the outputs of models used to project these effects are stored in large files with formats unfamiliar to the broader research community. This paper introduces a standardized, user‐friendly repository of simulated nuclear conflict climate impact data designed to lower barriers for non‐specialist researchers. The data product provides simplified, spreadsheet‐ready datasets derived from established Earth System Model simulations and includes variables relevant to human and environmental impacts: temperature, precipitation, ultraviolet radiation, crop yields, fish catch, and sea ice thickness for a range of nuclear conflict scenarios. This repository aims to facilitate interdisciplinary research into the long‐term consequences of nuclear detonations to support policy development.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Potential impacts of climate interventions on marine ecosystems

  2025-11-24

  articleOpen access

  Climate intervention research is expanding as current mitigation efforts to limit warming below crucial targets are falling short. • Substantial knowledge gaps exist on the potential impacts of climate intervention strategies on marine ecological systems. • We review the potential impacts of climate intervention on marine ecosystems, including biotic and abiotic factors.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Decadal Prediction Following Volcanic Eruptions

  NSF · $759k · 2014–2019

• Stratospheric Aerosol Climate Intervention Designed to Minimize Negative Impacts

  NSF · $754k · 2020–2025

• WCR: Coupled Climatic-Hydrologic Change in the Terrestrial Water Cycle of North America in the 20th and 21st Centuries: Natural Variability and Anthropogenic Impacts

  NSF · $819k · 2005–2011

• Collaborative Research on the Climatic Effects of the 1783-1784 Laki Volcanic Eruption

  NSF · $487k · 2003–2007

• Regional Climate Modeling of Volcanic Eruptions and the Arctic Climate System

  NSF · $342k · 2009–2013

Frequent coauthors

• Michael Mills

  2891 shared

• Anja Schmidt

  Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. (DLR)

  2888 shared

• Brian Zambri

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  2880 shared

• O. B. Toon

  Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics

  89 shared

• Ben Kravitz

  Indiana University Bloomington

  84 shared

• Lili Xia

  First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University

  80 shared

• Georgiy Stenchikov

  King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

  71 shared

• Oliviér Boucher

  Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique

  59 shared

Education

• B.A., Meteorology

  University of Wisconsin

  1970

• Other, Meteorology

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1974

• Ph.D., Meteorology

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1977

Awards & honors

• Latest Future of Life Award, August 6, 2022