{{Short description|American climate scientist and academic (born 1974)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=September 2017}} {{Infobox scientist | name = Kim Cobb | image = Kim Cobb’s Headshot, 2025.png | image_size = 200px | caption = Cobb in 2025 | birth_name = Kim Cobb | birth_date = {{birth year and age|1974}} | birth_place = Madison, Virginia, US | death_date = | death_place = | death_cause = | other_names = | education = | alma_mater = Yale University | occupation = Climate scientist | known_for = Paleoclimatology, Oceanography, Geochemistry | workplaces = {{unbulleted list|Georgia Institute of Technology|Brown University}} | title = | term = | predecessor = | successor = | boards = | awards = }} '''Kim M. Cobb''' (born 1974) is an American climate scientist, professor of Environment and Society and of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University, and director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. Cobb was previously a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is particularly interested in oceanography, geochemistry and paleoclimate modeling.
== Early life and education == Kim Cobb was born in 1974 in Madison, Virginia, US. She grew up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.<ref name=GS/> She became interested in oceanography after attending a summer school at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts. She studied biology and geology at Yale University, where she became increasingly aware of the anthropogenic causes of climate change. She moved off her original pre-med track and applied for a summer program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, graduating in 1996.<ref name="RealS" /> Cobb completed her PhD in oceanography at Scripps in 2002, hunting El Niño events in a sediment core from Santa Barbara. She spent two years as a post doc at Caltech before joining Georgia Tech as an assistant professor in 2004. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed publications in major journals.<ref name=RG/> She became a full professor in 2015 and supervises several PhD and MSc students.<ref name=CLP/>
==Research==
Cobb's group seeks to understand global climate change and identify the natural and anthropogenic causes. Cobb's research has taken her on several oceanographic voyages around the tropical Pacific and caving expeditions of the rainforests of Borneo. Cobb's research group uses corals and cave stalagmites as archives of past climate change and investigates past climate variability over the last several centuries to several hundreds of thousands of years ago. In addition to generating high-resolution paleoclimate records, Cobb's research group also monitors modern climate variability, performs model analysis, and characterizes tropical Pacific climate variability. She and her team collected ancient coral fragments from the islands of Kiribati and Palmyra, aged them with uranium–thorium dating and then used the oxygen isotope ratio cycle to measure the intensity of ''El Niño'' events over the last 7,000 years.<ref name=S16/> Cobb is on the editorial board of Geophysical Review Letters<ref name=GRL/> and acted as lead author on the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.<ref>{{Cite web|title=IPCC Authors (beta)|url=https://apps.ipcc.ch/report/authors/report.authors.php?q=35&p=|access-date=2021-08-08|website=apps.ipcc.ch}}</ref> In May, 2022, Brown University announced the appointment of Cobb as the director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society.<ref>{{cite press release | publisher=Brown University | date=May 11, 2022 | title=Climate scientist Kim Cobb to lead Institute at Brown for Environment and Society | url=https://www.brown.edu/news/2022-05-11/cobb}}</ref>
==Awards and recognition== * In 2007, she won the NSF CAREER award and the Georgia Tech Education Partnership Award<ref name=GAT/> * In 2008, Cobb was recognised as one of the nation's top young scientists, winning the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE)<ref name=NW/> * In 2009, Cobb received a Kavli 'Frontiers of Science' Fellowship<ref>{{Cite web |title=Cobb, Kim |url=https://vivo.brown.edu/display/kcobb3#Background |access-date=2025-04-30 |website=vivo.brown.edu}}</ref> * In 2019, Cobb was awarded the 2020 Hans Oeschger Medal by the European Geosciences Union<ref name="OeschgerEGU">{{cite web |url=https://www.egu.eu/news/545/egu-announces-2020-awards-and-medals/ |title=EGU announces 2020 awards and medals |work=News |publisher=European Geosciences Union |date=2019-10-22 |accessdate=2019-10-22 }}</ref> * In 2023, she was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union<ref>{{Cite web |title=Kim Cobb |url=https://www.agu.org/Search/PublicProfile?userId=84C75DE8-7531-4AA7-84D3-7E76711D52B0 |access-date=2023-10-23 |website=American Geophysical Union}}</ref> *2025 - Friend of the Planet award, National Center for Science Education<ref>{{cite web |title=Friend of Darwin and Friend of the Planet awards for 2025 |url=https://ncse.ngo/friend-darwin-and-friend-planet-awards-2025 |website=ncse.ngo |publisher=National Center for Science Education |access-date=18 June 2025}}</ref>
==Policy and public engagement== thumb|left|Cobb in 2010 speaking at PopTech Cobb sits on the American Association of Advancement of Science Climate Science Panel, the international CLIVAR Pacific Panel and the international PAGES-CLIVAR intersection panel.<ref name=Clivar/> She is on the advisory council for the AAAS Leshner Institute for Public Engagement.<ref name=LLIPE/>
Cobb is an advocate for outreach with communities, and regularly lectures to schools, colleges and other public groups, on climate science. She has been involved with policy and is the writer of several public interest articles on climate change, trying to inspire other climate scientists to speak up in international debate.<ref name=RealC/> She has appeared on Showtime's documentary "Years of Living Dangerously".{{citation needed|date=March 2019}} On Real Scientists, Cobb makes her case for studying the paleoclimate: "The instrumental record of climate is far too short to identify some of the most important changes in climate under greenhouse forcing. Paleoclimate data is coming to the rescue, looking at past droughts, extreme events, and sea level change".<ref name="RealS" /> Cobb gave a presentation at the March for Science in Atlanta, Georgia, in April 2017.<ref name=ES/><ref name=CMM/>
In February 2019, Cobb testified before the House Committee on Natural Resources for the hearing, "Climate Change: Impacts and the Need to Act."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://naturalresources.house.gov/hearings/climate-change-impacts-and-the-need-to-act|title=Climate Change: Impacts and the Need to Act {{!}} The House Committee on Natural Resources|website=naturalresources.house.gov|language=en|access-date=2019-10-17|archive-date=January 21, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220121070240/https://naturalresources.house.gov/hearings/climate-change-impacts-and-the-need-to-act|url-status=dead}}</ref> In this testimony, she described how the 2016 Pacific Ocean El Niño wiped out 90 percent of the corals in her study site, saying, "I had a front-row seat to the carnage." She underscored the severity and clear increases in the effects of climate change, noting that many scientists she talked with have been willing to collaborate with lawmakers on climate change.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Niiler |first1=Eric |title=Finally! Climate Science Returns to Capitol Hill |url=https://www.wired.com/story/finally-climate-science-returns-to-capitol-hill/ |magazine=Wired |accessdate=6 January 2020 |language=en |date=7 February 2019}}</ref>
==Diversity== At Georgia Tech, she is an ADVANCE Professor for "Institutional Diversity", part of the National Science Foundation's efforts to increase representation and advancement of women in science and engineering.<ref name=S17/>
== References == {{reflist|1=30em|refs= <ref name=S16>{{citation |url=https://www.science.org/content/article/corals-tie-stronger-el-ni-os-climate-change |title=Corals tie stronger El Niños to climate change |author=Christopher Pala |journal=Science |date=December 9, 2016|volume=354 |issue=6317 |page=1210 |doi=10.1126/science.354.6317.1210 |pmid=27940821 |bibcode=2016Sci...354.1210P |url-access=subscription }}</ref> <ref name=RealS>{{Cite web |url=http://realscientists.org/2016/02/07/coral-time-keeping-with-kim-cobb/ |title=Coral Time Keeping with Kim Cobb |date=February 7, 2016 |website=Real Scientists |author=Upulie |access-date=August 17, 2017 |archive-date=May 29, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190529020200/http://realscientists.org/2016/02/07/coral-time-keeping-with-kim-cobb/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> <ref name=RG>{{Cite web |url=https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kim_Cobb |title=Kim M. Cobb |website=ResearchGate |language=en |access-date=August 17, 2017}}</ref> <ref name=NW>{{Cite web |url=https://newswise.com/articles/two-georgia-tech-faculty-honored-by-the-white-house |title=Two Georgia Tech Faculty Honored by the White House |website=newswise.com |date=19 December 2008 |publisher=Georgia Institute of Technology}}</ref> <ref name=Clivar>{{Cite web |url=http://www.clivar.org/clivar-panels/pacific |title=Pacific Region Panel - About Us |website=www.clivar.org |access-date=August 17, 2017}}</ref> <ref name=RealC>{{Cite news |url=http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/kim-cobbs-view/ |title=Kim Cobb's view |work=RealClimate |access-date=August 17, 2017 |language=en}}</ref> <ref name=ES>{{Cite news |url=http://evidencesquared.com/ep7/ |title=Ep 7: Kim Cobb and the March for Science |date=April 10, 2017 |work=Evidence Squared |access-date=August 17, 2017 |language=en-US |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180908115435/http://evidencesquared.com/ep7/ |archive-date=September 8, 2018 |url-status=dead }}</ref> <ref name=CMM>{{Citation |last=Collin Maessen Media |title=Stand up for Science Rally - Kim Cobb |date=December 22, 2016 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UQo6I9wsvY |accessdate=August 17, 2017}}</ref> <ref name=GS>{{Cite web |url=http://gender-summit.com/gs-past-speakers4/103-gs3-north-america-speakers/426-cobb |title=Dr Kim Cobb - Gender Summit |last=Cobb |website=gender-summit.com |language=en |access-date=August 17, 2017 |archive-date=February 22, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220222191102/https://gender-summit.com/gs-past-speakers4/103-gs3-north-america-speakers/426-cobb |url-status=dead }}</ref> <ref name=GAT>{{citation |url=http://www.eas.gatech.edu/content/kim-cobb-and-k-salome-receive-georgia-techs-education-partnership-award |title=Kim Cobb and K. Salome receive Georgia Tech's Education Partnership Award |date=22 February 2007 |publisher=Georgia Institute of Technology |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20170915070641/http://www.eas.gatech.edu/content/kim-cobb-and-k-salome-receive-georgia-techs-education-partnership-award |archivedate=September 15, 2017 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> <ref name=S17>{{citation |url=https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-s-uphill-road-making-prestigious-early-career-award-more-diverse |title=NSF's uphill road to making prestigious early career award more diverse |author=Jeffrey Mervis |date=26 April 2017}}</ref> <ref name=LLIPE>{{citation |url=https://www.aaas.org/pes/leshner-leadership-institute |title=Leshner Leadership Institute for Public Engagement with Science |date=5 September 2017 |publisher=American Association for the ADvancement of Science}}</ref> <ref name=CLP>{{citation |url=http://shadow.eas.gatech.edu/~kcobb/people/people.html |title=Cobb Lab People |year=2017 |access-date=September 14, 2017 |archive-date=September 8, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180908093657/http://shadow.eas.gatech.edu/~kcobb/people/people.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> <ref name=GRL>{{Cite web|url=http://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/hub/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1944-8007/editorial-board/editorial-board.html|title=Editorial Board|last=|first=|date=|website=|publisher=Geophysical Research Letters|access-date=September 16, 2017|doi=10.1002/(ISSN)1944-8007}}</ref> }}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cobb, Kim}} Category:1974 births Category:American climatologists Category:American women climatologists Category:21st-century American earth scientists Category:Living people Category:Georgia Tech faculty Category:People from Madison, Virginia Category:Scientists from Virginia Category:Yale University alumni Category:21st-century American scientists Category:21st-century American women scientists Category:People from Pittsfield, Massachusetts Category:Scientists from Massachusetts Category:American women academics Category:Recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers Category:Brown University faculty Category:Scripps Institution of Oceanography alumni Category:Fellows of the American Geophysical Union