Katharine Hayhoe

On September 16, 2019 Hayhoe was named one of the United Nations Champions of the Earth in the science and innovation category.

Hayhoe has been very critical of Climate Deniers. On Sep 28, 2018 she said, “The six stages of climate denial are: It’s not real. It’s not us. It’s not that bad. It’s too expensive to fix. Aha, here’s a great solution (that actually does nothing). And — oh no! Now it’s too late. You really should have warned us earlier.”

The effectiveness of her outreach efforts to Christian communities have been the subject of study. She delivers lectures that are rooted in scripture and focus on the benefits of collective action to mitigate the effects of climate change. A 2017 study tested the effectiveness of a climate lecture Hayhoe delivered to students at the predominantly evangelical school Houghton College, in which she devoted time to a discussion of theology-based ethics and delivered information about climate change through a lens of evangelical tradition. Following her lecture, students exhibited more willingness to accept that global warming is a true phenomenon and had an increased awareness of the expert scientific consensus. In an interview with ThinkProgress, Hayhoe notes: "When we tie that to our Christian values there’s no conflict. In fact, quite the opposite — our faith demands that we act on this issue."

Hayhoe also hosted and produced a bi-weekly web series with PBS called Global Weirding: Climate, Politics, and Religion, which launched September 2016 and ran through March 2019.

Hayhoe has worked at Texas Tech since 2005. She has authored more than 120 peer-reviewed publications. She also co-authored some reports for the US Global Change Research Program, as well as some National Academy of Sciences reports, including the 3rd National Climate Assessment, released on May 6, 2014. Shortly after the report was released, Hayhoe said, "Climate change is here and now, and not in some distant time or place," adding that, "The choices we're making today will have a significant impact on our future." She has also served as an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report.

In addition to her research on climate change, Hayhoe is known for her communication around climate change and her advocacy efforts around climate action. Professor John Abraham has called her "perhaps the best communicator on climate change." Time magazine listed her among the 100 most influential people in 2014. In 2014, the American Geophysical Union awarded her its climate communications award. Hayhoe has also appeared at the White House with former President Barack Obama and the actor Leonardo DiCaprio at the first South by South Lawn festival.

In 2014, Hayhoe served as a science advisor to the documentary TV series Years of Living Dangerously, an Emmy Award-winning Showtime series that details how climate change has already impacted lives around the world. She was featured in the first episode of the series, meeting with actor Don Cheadle to discuss why she believed her Christian faith and her belief in the need to act on climate were not at odds.

In 2009, she and her husband, Andrew Farley, co-authored a book called A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions, which outlines the ways in which climate science reflects conservative Christian beliefs. The book resulted in word-of-mouth referrals across various Christian communities, who began to invite Hayhoe to speak at Christian colleges, churches, and other conservative groups. Notably, when Hayhoe first met her husband and co-author, he was skeptical of global warming, but shifted his views. She notes that she was able to change his mind over the course of a year and a half, with the help of data collected on a NASA website that documents rising global temperatures over time. Hayhoe has recognized that those debates with her husband sharpened her skills as a communicator engaging audiences skeptical of climate science.

Hayhoe wrote a chapter of a book by Newt Gingrich about climate change in 2009, and, in 2011, was told by Gingrich's co-author, Terry Maple, that it had been accepted. Gingrich announced in late 2011 that this chapter was dropped on his request, saying, "We didn't know that they were doing that, and we told them to kill it."

Hayhoe received her Bachelor of Science degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Toronto in 1994. She began her college career studying astrophysics, but upon taking a course on climate science to fulfill a course requirement, she shifted her focus to atmospheric science, which she ultimately specialized in at graduate school. She attended graduate school University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she received her Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy. Her Ph.D. committee was chaired by Donald Wuebbles, who recruited her for a research project assessing the health of the Great Lakes. Wuebbles also introduced her to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy organization.

Katharine Anne Scott Hayhoe (born April 15, 1972) is an atmospheric scientist and professor of political science at Texas Tech University, where she is director of the Climate Science Center. She is also the CEO of the consulting firm ATMOS Research and Consulting.