Disclaimer: this website is composed of symbols and images that do not in themselves carry meaning outside of a total social situation which none of us choose.
Hi, I'm Drew. Welcome to my organic, fair trade, gluten-free website! I am a postdoctoral associate at the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment and an incoming assistant professor of environmental studies and sciences at Oberlin College; also, I have absolutely no intention of running for Senate in the great state of Minnesota. Be aware that this website is very large, and some of it is randomly generated. For the full experience, reload a bunch of times and navigate as follows:
- If you are interested in my SCIENTIFIC WORK: In my scientific research, I use satellite data to track pollution back to its source and monitor emissions in real time, and I maintain free open-source software that allows others to do the same. If you want to learn more, check out out my ongoing projects, research papers, conference presentations, and environmental datasets. Everything is open access, and you can find a general-audience explanation of each of the publications I led in my newsletter.
- If you are interested in my INTERDISCIPLINARY WORK: My interdisciplinary work imagines how humanity can democratically govern itself in an age of environmental crisis. With collaborators, I imagine the sorts of institutions and protocols that advance economic democracy within planetary boundaries, with an emphasis on connecting science with social movements. This work has taken the form of books, video games, public writing, and academic publications.
- If you are interested in MY CV: you can download it here.
- If you are interested in MISCELLANEOUS: This website is big because I have had it since high school and I don't delete things. If you search for it, you can find ephemera I have made over the years, including original music.
- If you are interested in HUMAN CONTACT: I can be reached at drew [at] drewpendergrass [dot] com or at the academic address in my CV. For upcoming events, check out my events page. You can follow me on Bluesky or LinkedIn. The best way to follow my work is to subscribe to my newsletter below (expect emails every six months or so at most):
Upcoming events
Panel: Politics of Nature in the Anthropocene: On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Models (Berlin, Ger.)
Date: 11 February 2026 at 6:30pm CET
Location: Museum of Natural History, Invalidenstraße 43, 10115 Berlin
As part of the Brecht-Tage festival in Berlin, which this year is focused on Brecht's "Green Revolution", I'll be presenting on the politics of knowledge in Earth system modeling and its relationship with Bertolt Brecht's plays and writings on science and nature. Other presenters include Hans Christian von Herrmann, Sebastian Kirsch, Tom Turnbull, and Patrick Primavesi. This is the second of three events taking place at the museum this evening, running from 5:00pm through 8:00pm CET. Entry is free! More information on the Brecht-Tage 2026 website.
Panel: »Nichtstun fürs Klima!«: Brecht's Daoism as a strategy of interventionist non-action (Berlin, Ger.)
Date: 12 February 2026 at 8:00pm CET
Location: Literature Forum at the Brecht House, Chausseestraße 125, 10115 Berlin, Germany
As part of the Brecht-Tage festival in Berlin, my co-author Troy Vettese and I will be presenting some of our work on the surprising resonances between Bertolt Brecht and Laozi: both figures praise forms of non-action and uselessness. In conversation with Heinrich Detering, we will comment on the implications for climate action. This is the fourth of four events taking place at the Brecht-Haus this evening, running from 4:30pm through 9:30pm CET. More information on the Brecht-Tage 2026 website.
Lecture: NC State Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Seminar Series (Raleigh, NC)
Date: 20 February 2026 at 3:30pm ET
Location: NC State campus (exact location tbd)
I will be presenting some of my current work on emissions quantification as part of the NC State Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Seminar Series.
Additional events, future and past, are available on my events page.
Featured science!
Pendergrass, D.C. Jacob, D. J., Balasus, N., Estrada, L., Varon, D. J., East, J. D., He, M., Mooring, T. A., Penn, E., Nesser, H., & Worden, J. R. (2025). Trends and seasonality of 2019–2023 global methane emissions inferred from a localized ensemble transform Kalman filter (CHEEREIO v1.3.1) applied to TROPOMI satellite observations. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 25(21), 14353–14369. Link to paper (open access). Link to PDF. Read a general audience explainer.
Figure: Annual posterior methane emission trends for 2019-2023 disaggregated by region and sector. Emissions are inferred using a localized ensemble transform Kalman filter applied to TROPOMI satellite observations. Panels (a) and (b) show posterior emission changes relative to 2019, disaggregated by region and sector respectively. Inset percentages show changes relative to 2019 values for selected regions/sectors. Error bars show range of the inversion ensemble for the global emission trend. Panel (c) shows 2019-2023 trends in posterior emissions by region obtained from linear regression.
You can learn more about my research on the projects page, or you can read through all of our scientific papers and presentations on their respective pages.
A featured interdisciplinary project!
A short primer on the politics of geoengineering
In 2025, I wrote a short essay on the politics of geoengineering for an edited volume called Power Shift from WVU Press. I am in good company (Joshua Clover, Leah Aronowsky, Dominic Boyer, Mijin Cha, Cameron Hu, and Ashley Dawson are among the contributors). You can buy the whole book here.
Pendergrass, D. C. (2025). Geoengineering. In I. Szeman and J. Wenzel (Eds.), Power Shift: Keywords for a New Politics of Energy. West Virginia University Press. | Read it here.
Read more of my writing here.
A random interview
Blueprint from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (radio)
19 February 2021 | Listen here
In this radio interview, my co-author Troy Vettese and I spoke with Blueprint's Jonathan Green about how land use change might help us make sense of recent global fire crises from California to Siberia, Brazil to Australia.
Additional interviews are available on my interviews page.
All the cool kids are using CHEEREIO!
CHEEREIO is a tool that uses observations of pollutants in the atmosphere, measured from satellites or surface stations, to correct supercomputer models that simulate the Earth. Powerful use cases for CHEEREIO include tracking pollution back to its source, even if there are no local observations on the ground, and monitoring greenhouse gas emissions in near-real-time. Read more on my projects page or the offical CHEEREIO site.
