Texas Tech University

Katharine Hayhoe, Ph.D.

Horn Distinguished Professor and Endowed Chair in Public Policy and Public Law
Political Science

Phone: (806) 834-8665

Office: Holden Hall 113

For all inquiries, please contact Dr. Hayhoe's assistant, Laura James. Please note that Dr. Hayhoe is not currently accepting graduate students.

For more information visit: Web Site

Katharine Hayhoe is a Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor and Endowed Chair in Public Policy and Public Law in the Public Administration program of the Department of Political Science at Texas Tech University. She is also the Chief Scientist for the global conservation organization, The Nature Conservancy.

She has a B.Sc. in physics and astronomy from the University of Toronto and an M.S. and Ph.D. in atmospheric science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and has been awarded honorary doctorates from Colgate University, Trinity College, and Victoria College at the University of Toronto.

Professor Hayhoe's research focuses on developing and applying high-resolution climate projections to evaluate the future impacts of climate change on human society and the natural environment. She has published over 125 peer-reviewed abstracts and publications and co-authored Downscaling Techniques for High-Resolution Climate Projections: From Global Change to Local Impacts (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and served as lead author on key reports for the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the National Academy of Sciences, including the Second, Third and Fourth U.S. National Climate Assessments. Her TED talk, The Most Important Thing You Can Do About Climate Change: Talk About It has received over 4 million views and her new book, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World was released in September 2021.

She is an Oxfam Sister of the Planet and currently serves on a number of advisory boards including the science advisory board for the Environmental Resilience Institute at Indiana University, the advisory board for King Philanthropies, the international advisory board for the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, the sustainability advisory board for Netflix, and the advisory board for the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.

In 2019, Dr. Hayhoe was named a United Nations Champion of the Earth in Science and Innovation. In 2022, she received the American Geophysical Union's Ambassador Award and was named a Fellow of the AGU, while in 2023 she was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

katharine hayhoe

Department of Political Science

  • Address

    Dept. of Political Science, Texas Tech University, 113 Holden Hall, Boston & Akron Streets, Lubbock, TX 79409-1015 Fax: 806.742.0850
  • Phone

    806.742.3121
  • Email

    pols.webmaster@ttu.edu