Lesley Ott is a climate scientist with 20 years experience studying air pollution, greenhouse gases, and climate change. She received her PhD in atmospheric science from the University of Maryland in 2006 and has been working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center ever since. Her work focuses on using a combination of satellite data and advanced Earth system models to better understand the sources and sinks of greenhouse gases and how the processes that control them may change over time.

Since 2024, she has served as the Project Scientist for the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center, a multi-agency effort designed to improve the quality, transparency, and accessibility of greenhouse gas information in support of national climate mitigation efforts. She also chairs the modeling task team for the World Meteorological Organization's Global Greenhouse Gas Watch.

Chair, World Meteorological Organization's Global Greenhouse Gas Watch Modeling Task Team

Member of National Academies of Sciences Panel: Midterm Assessment of Implementation of the Decadal Survey

Editor of Environmental Research Letters Special Collection on Carbon Monitoring Systems

US Global Change Research Program, State of Carbon Cycle Report 2 (SOCCR2), Chapter 8

Member of US Delegation to COP22, Marrakech, Morocco

Member of National Academies of Sciences Panel: Earth Science and Applications from Space 2017 Decadal Survey – Marine and Terrestrial Ecosystems and Natural Resource Management

Member of NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System, OCO, and GeoCarb Science Teams

Lead, Goddard Task Group on Changes in the Arctic and Boreal System (CABS)

Lead, Goddard Task Group on Urban Environments