Summary
Prof. Joeri Rogelj is Director of Research at the Grantham Institute and Professor of Climate Science & Policy at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London. He studies how societies can transform towards more sustainable futures. His world-leading interdisciplinary research connects Earth system sciences to the study of societal change and policy.
Prof. Rogelj publishes on the effectiveness of international climate agreements including the Copenhagen Accord and the Paris Agreement, carbon budgets, emission pathways in line with 1.5°C and 2°C of global warming, net zero emission targets, and the interaction between climate, sustainable development and climate justice.
Science policy
As a long-serving lead author on the annual Emissions Gap Reports by the UN Environment Programme and reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Joeri Rogelj is a leading contributor to scientific assessments that inform international climate policy. He first served as a contributor to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report focussing on the assessment of carbon budgets, then as a Coordinating Lead Author on mitigation pathways for the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, and, most recently, as a Lead Author for the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment.
In 2019, he was the youngest member serving on the UN Secretary-General's Climate Science Advisory Group; and since 2022, he serves as one of the fifteen members of the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, which informs and advises the European Union on its climate action.
He is also active in providing scientific evidence for climate change litigation, for example, in support of Children vs Climate Crisis in which sixteen children from across the world petition the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to hold five of the world’s leading economic powers accountable for inaction on the climate crisis.
Education and earlier appointments
Joeri Rogelj holds a PhD (2013) in climate science from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and an MSc in Engineering (2003) and a postgraduate degree in Cultures and Development Studies (2005), both from KU Leuven, Belgium. Before joining the Grantham Institute, he held research positions at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK, Germany), as a post-doctoral researcher at ETH Zurich, and as a Senior Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA, Austria) with whom he continues to collaborate. His professional background further includes three years as a project engineer in the field of rural electrification and drinking water systems in Rwanda, including leading the Rwanda Hydropower Atlas study.
Recognition
In 2021, Joeri Rogelj was awarded the Early Career Scientist Award (Europe) from the International Science Council for exceptional contribution to science and international scientific collaboration by an early career researcher. In 2016, he received the inaugural Piers Sellers Award for his world-leading contributions to solution-focused climate research. Earlier, in 2014, he received the ETH Medal for his outstanding doctoral dissertation, and the 2011 Peccei Award for outstanding research by a young scientist. Since 2019, he has been a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher representing the top 1% impactful researchers in the field of Energy & Environment.
Service
Prof. Rogelj serves as Member of the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science magazine, Member of the Editorial Board for Environmental Research Letters, and Member of the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change.
Selected Publications
Journal Articles
Rogelj J, Fransen T, den Elzen MGJ, et al., 2023, Credibility gap in net-zero climate targets leaves world at high risk., Science, Vol:380, Pages:1014-1016
Forster PM, Smith CJ, Walsh T, et al., 2023, Indicators of Global Climate Change 2022: Annual update of large-scale indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence, Earth System Science Data, Vol:15, ISSN:1866-3508, Pages:2295-2327
Rogelj J, 2023, Net zero targets in science and policy, Environmental Research Letters, Vol:18, ISSN:1748-9318
Koberle AC, Vandyck T, Guivarch C, et al., 2021, The cost of mitigation revisited (Nov, 10.1038/s41558-021-01203-6, 2021), Nature Climate Change, Vol:12, ISSN:1758-678X, Pages:298-298
Rogelj J, Geden O, Cowie A, et al., 2021, Net-zero emissions targets are vague: three ways to fix, Nature, Vol:591, ISSN:0028-0836, Pages:365-368
Rogelj J, Forster PM, Kriegler E, et al., 2020, Estimating and tracking the remaining carbon budget for stringent climate targets (vol 571, pg 335, 2019), Nature, Vol:580, ISSN:0028-0836
Rogelj J, Schleussner C-F, 2019, Unintentional unfairness when applying new greenhouse gas emissions metrics at country level, Environmental Research Letters, Vol:14, ISSN:1748-9326, Pages:1-9
Rogelj J, Huppmann D, Krey V, et al., 2019, A new scenario logic for the Paris Agreement long-term temperature goal, Nature, Vol:573, ISSN:0028-0836, Pages:357-363
Rogelj J, Popp A, Calvin KV, et al., 2018, Scenarios towards limiting global mean temperature increase below 1.5 degrees C, Nature Climate Change, Vol:8, ISSN:1758-678X, Pages:325-+
Rogelj J, Fricko O, Meinshausen M, et al., 2017, Understanding the origin of Paris Agreement emission uncertainties, Nature Communications, Vol:8, ISSN:2041-1723