Leadership

• VP for External Communications and Chief Climatologist
• Email: hcullen@climatecentral.org

In addition to her responsibilities as Vice President for External Communications, Dr. Heidi Cullen serves as Chief Climatologist for Climate Central — a non-profit science journalism organization headquartered in Princeton, NJ. Before joining Climate Central, where she reports on climate and energy issues, Dr. Cullen served as The Weather Channel’s first on-air climate expert and helped create Forecast Earth, a weekly television series focused on issues related to climate change and the environment. Prior to that Dr. Cullen worked as a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO. She received the NOAA Climate & Global Change Fellowship and spent two years at Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society working to apply long-range climate forecasts to the water resources sector in Brazil and Paraguay. She is a member of the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society and the Society of Environmental Journalists. Dr. Cullen also serves as a member of the NOAA Science Advisory Board. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Columbia University and went on to receive a Ph.D. in climatology and ocean-atmosphere dynamics at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Dr. Cullen is the author of The Weather of the Future published in August of 2010 by Harper Collins and is a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University.

Publications

• M. Barlow, M. Wheeler, B. Lyon, and H. Cullen, 2005: Modulation of Daily Precipitation Over Southwest Asia by the Madden-Julian Oscillation, Monthly Weather Review, 133, 3579-3594.
• M.H. Glantz and H. Cullen, 2003: Zimbabwe's Food Crisis. Environment, 45(1), 9-11.
• M. Barlow, H. Cullen, B. Lyons, 2002: Drought in Central and Southwest Asia: La Nina, the warm pool, and Indian Ocean precipitation. J. Clim., 15(7): 697-700.
• M. Visbeck, J. Hurrell, L. Polvani, and H.M. Cullen, 2001: The North Atlantic Oscillation: Past, present, and future. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 98: 12876-12877.
• H.M. Cullen, P.B. deMenocal, 2000: North Atlantic Influence on Tigris-Euphrates Streamflow, Int. J. Clim., 20(8): 853-863.
• H.M. Cullen, P.B. deMenocal, 2000: The Possible Role of Climate in the collapse of the Akkadian Empire: evidence from the deep sea. Geology, 28(4): 379-382.
• H.M. Cullen, R.D. D'Arrigo, E.R. Cook and M.E. Mann, 2000: Multiproxy Reconstructions of the North Atlantic Oscillation, Paleoceanography, 16(1): 27-39.
• M. Visbeck, H. Cullen, G. Krahmann, and N. Naik. 1998. An ocean model's response to North Atlantic Oscillation-like wind forcing, Geophys. Res. Lett.., 25(24): 4521-4525.
• G. Bond, W. Showers, M. Cheseby, R. Lotti, P. Almasi, P. deMenocal, P. Priore, H. Cullen, I. Hajdas, G. Bonani. 1997. A pervasive millennial-scale cycle in North Atlantic Holocene and glacial climates, Science, 278: 1257-1266.