Natalie Mahowald

Professor Natalie Mahowald serves as the Irving Porter Church Professor in Engineering and Chair of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University. In the field of geoscience, she is also the Director of Graduate Studies for Atmospheric Sciences in the College of Engineering. Mahowald holds undergraduate degrees in engineering physics and German from Washington University (BS and AB, 1988), a Master of Science in natural resource policy from the University of Michigan (1993), and a PhD in atmospheric science and meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1996). Her career includes postdoctoral research at Stockholm University in Sweden, a faculty position at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 1998 to 2002, five years as a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and her appointment at Cornell since 2007.

Mahowald's research focuses on earth system feedbacks influencing climate change, with emphasis on the global and regional atmospheric transport of biogeochemically active substances like desert dust and interactions with the carbon cycle. Her group, Aerosol-Biogeochemistry-Climate Interactions, utilizes advanced three-dimensional global transport and climate models integrated with satellite and in situ observations. Notable publications include "Global iron connections between desert dust, ocean biogeochemistry, and climate" published in Science in 2005, "Atmospheric global dust cycle and iron inputs to the ocean" in Global Biogeochemical Cycles in 2005, "Are the impacts of land use on warming underestimated in climate policy?" in Environmental Research Letters in 2017, and aerosol-related papers in Nature Communications in 2018. As a lead author for the 2018 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, her scholarship has profoundly shaped understandings of aerosol impacts on climate and biogeochemistry. Mahowald has been honored with the AAAS Fellowship (2020), AGU Fellowship (2013), Guggenheim Fellowship (2013), American Meteorological Society Fellowship (2011), and the Henry G. Houghton Award (2006), among others. Named a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher in 2015, her publications have amassed over 62,000 citations, underscoring her significant influence in the academic community.

Professional Email: mahowald@cornell.edu