Michael Earl Schlesinger (February 23, 1943 – April 11, 2018)[1] was an American climatologist who was Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and director of the Climate Research Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
He received his Ph.D. (meteorology) in 1976 from the University of California, Los Angeles.
He was instrumental in developing a range of simple and complex climate models, which have been used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Energy Modeling Forum.
His research focused on: (1) simulating and understanding the effects on climate of a human-induced melting of the Greenland ice sheet; (2) simulating and understanding the coupled climate-chemistry system, including the influences of the Sun – both irradiance and energetic electron precipitation – and volcanoes; (3) understanding and reducing the uncertainty in the estimation of climate sensitivity and climate feedbacks; and (4) performing integrative assessment of climate change, including further development of the robust adaptive decision strategy for mitigating and adapting to human-induced climate change.
[4] He edited four books, most recently Human-induced climate change: An interdisciplinary assessment.