Research Interests
Prof. Kopp’s focuses on understanding uncertainty in past and future climate change, with major emphases on sea-level change, the interactions between physical climate change and the economy, and the use of climate risk information to inform decisionmaking. Key questions guiding his research include: (1) How has sea level changed in the geological and historical past, and how do ongoing changes compare to these past changes? (2) How may sea level change in the future in response to climate forcing? (3) How do climate and sea-level change impact the economy and human well-being? (4) How can climate and sea-level science more effectively support climate risk management under deep uncertainty?
Short History
Robert Kopp is a climate scientist who serves at Rutgers University as a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences. Professor Kopp’s research focuses on past and future sea-level change, the interactions between physical climate change and the economy, the use of climate risk information to inform decision-making, and the role of higher education in supporting societal climate risk management. He directs the Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub, a Rutgers-led consortium that advances coastal climate adaptation and the scientific understanding of natural and human coastal climate dynamics. He is a founding principal investigator of the Climate Impact Lab, a multi-institutional collaboration advancing data-driven approaches to estimating the social and human costs of climate change. He is also co-lead for engagement and applications for the NASA Sea-Level Change Team. He was a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent (2021) Sixth Assessment Report. He has previously served at Rutgers as Director of the Rutgers Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and as co-director of the University Office of Climate Action. Professor Kopp received his Ph.D. in Geobiology from the California Institute of Technology and his undergraduate degree in Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago. He is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow.
Teaching Efforts
Undergraduate/Graduate
Solving the Climate Crisis
Climate Change Risk Analysis
Previous Seminars
Graduate Seminar: Assessing and Governing Long-Term Risks
Joint Rutgers-Princeton Graduate Seminar: Geological Constraints on Climate Sensitivity
Rutgers SAS Honors Seminar: Energy in Nature and Society: From Earth’s Deep Past to Civilization’s Future
Graduate seminar on Major Transitions in the Evolution of the Global Carbon Cycle
Links
Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub: https://coastalhub.org/
Climate Impact Lab: https://impactlab.org/
NASA Sea-Level Change Team: https://sealevel.nasa.gov/