The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), at Columbia University in New York City, is a component laboratory of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Earth-Sun Exploration Division and a unit of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. Current research at GISS emphasizes global climate change.

GISS was established in May 1961 by Robert Jastrow to do basic research in space sciences in support of Goddard programs. It was then called the Goddard Space Flight Center Institute for Space Studies but quickly became known as the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Since 1981, GISS has been directed by James E. Hansen.

In November 2004, Climatologists Drew Shindell and Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, received Scientific American magazine's Top 50 Scientist award.

A key objective of Goddard Institute for Space Studies research is prediction of climate change in the 21st century. The research combines paleogeological record, analysis of comprehensive global datasets (derived mainly from spacecraft observations), with global models of atmospheric, land surface, and oceanic processes.

Gavin A. Schmidt is a climatologist and climate modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. He works on the variability of the ocean circulation and climate, using general circulation models (GCMs). He has also worked on ways to reconcile paleo-data with models. He helped develop the GISS ocean and coupled GCMs to improve the representation of the present day climate, while investigating their response to climate forcing. The latest GISS GCM is called ModelE.

He is the co-author, with Joshua Wolfe, of Climate Change: Picturing the Science (2009), which has a foreword by Jeffrey D. Sachs. The book combines images of the effects of climate change with scientific explanations.

In October 2011, the American Geophysical Union announced that Schmidt was to be awarded its inaugural Climate Communications Prize for his work on communicating climate-change issues to the public. The award is to be presented at the AGU's Fall Meeting in December. The award news release noted his outreach work including co-founding and contributing to the RealClimate blog.

David Suzuki, CC, OBC (born March 24, 1936) is a Canadian academic, science broadcaster and environmental activist. Suzuki earned a Ph.D in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961, and was a professor in the genetics department at the University of British Columbia from 1963 until his retirement in 2001. Since the mid-1970s, Suzuki has been known for his TV and radio series and books about nature and the environment. He is best known as host of the popular and long-running CBC Television science magazine, The Nature of Things, seen in over forty nations. He is also well known for criticizing governments for their lack of action to protect the environment.

A long time activist to reverse global climate change, Suzuki co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation in 1990, to work "to find ways for society to live in balance with the natural world that sustains us." The Foundation's priorities are: oceans and sustainable fishing, climate change and clean energy, sustainability, and Suzuki's Nature Challenge. He also served as a director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association from 1982-1987.