Episode 8: Andy Dessler

Deep Convection

Born to a space physicist father, Andy Dessler was steeped in science and academia from birth. Unlike other children of successful academics, he never perceived his father’s profession and the implicit expectations put on him as a burden, but soon decided that science was what he wanted to do as well.

Andy describes how his career was strongly influenced, at many critical junctures (including where to go to grad school) by his dad. So this keeps with a little theme of parents and children that we seem to have this season.

Andy and Adam are more or less contemporaries and have quite a few things in common. They both started out working in the stratosphere, on topics related to the ozone problem. In fact the first scientific seminar Adam went to as a new graduate student was given by Andy, right after his own thesis defense. So this was a conversation between two people who understand each other pretty well.

The ozone problem was more or less solved by the time Andy was a postdoc, and so, wanting to be where the action was, he switched, and started working on tropospheric water vapor, and from there he got into climate change. This continues to be a theme in Andy’s research: he works on something for a while, but when he senses it’s tapped out, he changes direction, and he’s done this a few times. Perhaps all scientists do this, but Andy has done it more consciously and maybe more often than others.

I tell graduate students that all the time, I say, “In 10 or 15 years, you’re not gonna be working on this. So you need to learn how to do research.” If you know how to do research, you can do anything, that’s really the key: to come up with hypotheses, read the literature, do stuff like that… […] There’s a huge amount of data out there, just mountains of data that you can download, and it’s really exciting. I’m having a great time.”

At least as much as for his scientific research, Andy stands out for his public engagement. For many years, he has been writing and speaking to broad audiences about climate. He has written blogs, op-eds, books, and he’s active on social media. He hasn’t shied away from the political, despite having told himself, early in his career, that he would. So he and Adam talk about how that happened, including the time he spent, early in his career, at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

In the last couple of years, Andy’s research has moved into climate impacts. He’s studying the Texas power grid, for example, and generally looking for ways to understand the risks due to extreme weather events and climate change, and to contribute to climate adaptation. Making this shift, at this point in time and in their careers, is another thing he and Adam have in common.

The interview with Andy Dessler was recorded in February 2022.

• @AndrewDessler on Twitter
• Andy’s website at Texas A&M