PNNL

Brian O’Neill, a Laboratory fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and a chief scientist at the Joint Global Change Research Institute, has been named to the Climate Security Roundtable established by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The Roundtable brings together experts across different sectors to support the Climate Security Advisory Council, an existing partnership between the intelligence and federal science communities. The goal of these groups is to better understand and predict the effects of climate change on national security interests.

“Climate security is a complex and increasingly critical area of research,” said O’Neill. “Understanding the risks posed by a changing climate requires collaboration across disciplines and subject areas. I’m excited for the discussion and collaborations that will emerge from this group.”

Appointment to a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Roundtable represents recognition as a national leader in a subject area. This Roundtable includes experts from academia, the public sector, and the private sector.

O’Neill’s work models how changing societal factors are affected by and influence the climate. O’Neill was a leader in developing the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, which have been broadly adopted by the climate science community as scenarios of future human development. O’Neill also recently co-authored an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

O’Neill began at PNNL and the Joint Global Change Research Institute in 2020. Prior to joining PNNL, O’Neill was a professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and served as director of research at the Korbel School’s Pardee Center for International Futures. O’Neill led research groups on integrated assessment modeling and on climate and human systems at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research and on population and climate change at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.