Andrew Pershing

Chief Program Officer

As VP for Science, Andrew Pershing, Ph.D. leads Climate Central’s climate science activity. His role includes bridging primary research and media analysis to amplify critical work on climate change and climate impacts and make it accessible to audiences around the world. As the Director of Attribution Science and Climate Fingerprinting, Pershing is developing tools like the Climate Shift Index to quantify how climate change has increased the likelihood or severity of conditions in the atmosphere and ocean. He works closely with communications experts at Climate Central and our partners to help the media and others to incorporate this information into their content. Pershing has led interdisciplinary research teams to study the impact of global warming on marine ecosystems in the northwest Atlantic. More recently, his work has focused on how climate trends interact with decisions that people make and on how marine ecosystems store and process carbon. As a communicator, Pershing has deep experience working with journalists to present climate science on air and in print.

Previously Pershing served as chief scientific officer for the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, where he headed the Climate Change Ecology Lab. He was the lead author for the Oceans and Marine Resources chapter of the Fourth U.S. National Climate Assessment. He was also a member of the University of Maine faculty, as associate professor of oceanography in the School of Marine Sciences. Pershing holds a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Cornell University and a B.S. in aquatic biology from Brown University.

Selected Publications