Jonathan Overpeck, from the University of Arizona, is the EarthWeek 2017 plenary speaker. His talk title is "The Colorado River, Climate Change and Drought."
Overpeck ("Peck") is a Regents Professor of Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, and the Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Professor of Science, both at the University of Arizona. He is a climate scientist, who has written over 200 published works on climate and environmental sciences, served as a coordinating lead author for the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment (2007), and as a lead author for the IPCC 5th Assessment (2014). Other awards include the US Department of Commerce Gold Medal, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Walter Orr Roberts award of the American Meteorological Society, and the Quivira Coalition's Radical Center Award for his work with rural ranchers and land managers. Peck has active climate research programs on five continents, loves trying to understand drought and megadrought dynamics (and risk), and is also a lead investigator of the Climate Assessment for the Southwest and the SW Climate Science Center – two major programs focused on regional climate adaptation. He has appeared and testified before Congress multiple times, is a Fellow of AGU and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and tweets about climate-related issues @TucsonPeck.
