As a professor of Geoscience at Penn State, Richard Alley’s is widely credited with showing that Earth has experienced abrupt climate change in the past—and likely will again, based on his meticulous study of ice cores from Greenland and West Antarctica. Alley joined the faculty of Penn State in 1988 after graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1987 and continuing his research for a short time there. His research interests focus on glaciology, sea level change and abrupt climate change, and he frequently discusses earth sciences on major media outlets, including NPR, BBC and PBS.

In recent years, he served as one of the authors on the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose members shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2008.

Dr. Richard Alley is the recipient of the 2011 Stephen Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Communication.