K.D. Nelson Lecture Series – Dr. Justin Mankin

The Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences presents the K.D. Nelson Lecture Series featuring speaker Justin Mankin. His talk is titled: From mechanisms to decisions: Constraining uncertainty in the human impacts of climate change. 

How will climate change affect people and the things they value? Earth System Model projections of future climate change are notoriously uncertain at the regional scales where impacts are felt and where responses are developed. Drawing on examples from violent conflict, economic growth, and water resources, my talk highlights my research to inform society’s management of climate risks. I discuss my efforts to (1) meaningfully connect geophysical changes with human consequences, (2) quantify, attribute, and constrain uncertainty, and (3) inform model design and analysis choices to ensure scientific answers about future climate impacts are sound, transparent, reproducible, useful, and just. Together, my group’s research demonstrates the importance of science that spans both fundamental and applied questions of climate impacts to best prepare society for a warmer world.

Justin Mankin is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Dartmouth College and PI of Dartmouth’s Climate Modeling & Impacts Group. He also holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Earth Sciences (EARS) and the Ecology, Evolution, Environment, & Society (EEES) graduate program, and is an Adjunct Associate Research Scientist in the Division of Ocean & Climate Physics at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. His previous career was as an intelligence officer working in South Asia and the Middle East. He holds degrees from Columbia (BA, MPA), the London School of Economics (MSc), and Stanford (PhD).