Ronan Connolly, PH.D.

Dr. Ronan Connolly is an independent scientist, environmentalist, and writer with a strong academic foundation in the physical sciences. He earned a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Chemistry with a minor in Mathematics from University College Dublin in 2000 and went on to complete a Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry there in 2003, with a thesis on the conformations of branched polymers that earned him the BOC Gases Award for best doctoral research. Connolly’s early interests spanned mathematics, programming, and scientific inquiry, reflecting his multidisciplinary approach to research and problem-solving.

After his Ph.D., Connolly worked with his father, Dr. Michael Connolly, on a variety of environmental and engineering challenges, including sustainable aquaculture, wastewater treatment, heat exchanger design, and energy-efficient building materials. In 2009 he began to focus systematically on climate change research, eventually launching the Global Warming Solved blog in 2014 to share their findings in an accessible way. Since 2018 he has served as a co-team leader at the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES), contributing to numerous peer-reviewed publications on climate science, atmospheric data, and environmental detection and attribution studies.

Beyond his scientific work, Connolly maintains an active presence across academic platforms and social media, and he continues to pursue a broad range of interests including music, history, archaeology, and anthropology. His research reflects a commitment to open inquiry and public communication on complex environmental topics.