Colin P. Kelley is a senior research fellow with the Center for Climate and Security. He is also an associate research scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University. Kelley is a climate scientist focusing on climate variability and change, particularly drought, in semiarid and arid regions that are especially vulnerable. Kelley uses land-based and remotely sensed observations along with atmospheric and coupled climate models to examine the regional and large-scale mechanisms of climate change. He also has a special interest in placing such changes within a context of vulnerability and resilience due to the many other factors that relate to water and food security in order to better understand their relative importance. He has published ground-breaking research on the relationship between climate change and drought in Syria and the broader Levant and is a regular commentator on this subject. He has a PhD from Columbia University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and was a PACE Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara.