Margaret Leinen (born September 20, 1946) is an American paleoceanographer and paleoclimatologist. In 2013, Leinen was appointed the 11th director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, as well as the dean of the School of Marine Sciences at the University of California, San Diego.^[1] She founded the Climate Response Fund, a non-profit focused on enabling better understanding, regulation and responsible use of climate engineering research, and served as its president for a time. For two years, Leinen also worked as chief science officer for a startup company in green technology and climate change mitigation.^[2] Leinen has also served as the U.S. Department of State science envoy for the oceans to Latin America and the Pacific.^[3]

In 1969 Leinen received her Bachelor of Science degree in Geology from the University of Illinois, a master's in geological oceanography from Oregon State University in 1975,^[4] and her doctorate in oceanography in 1980 from the University of Rhode Island.^[5][6]

She has been elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science^[7] and of the Geological Society of America.^[8] In 2016, she was selected as a U.S. Science Envoy by the United States State Department.^[9] In 2020, Leinen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences^[10][2] and was named a fellow of The Oceanography Society^[11] and an Honorary Member of the AMS in 2022.^[12]

Dr. Leinen was selected to serve as co-chair of the Decade Advisory Board for UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and is a member of the distinguished Leadership Council of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative. She has served as President of the American Geophysical Union, Chair of the Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Science Section of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, and President of The Oceanography Society. She serves on the boards of the California Ocean Science Trust and Science Counts. She is the Vice Chair of the Research Board of the $500 million Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative.

• "The Pelagic clay province of the North Pacific Ocean" ^[13]
• Blank, M., Leinen, M. & Prospero, J. Major Asian aeolian inputs indicated by the mineralogy of aerosols and sediments in the western North Pacific. Nature 314, 84–86 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1038/314084a0 ^[14]
• Schmidt, G., Severinghaus, J., Abe-Ouchi, A. et al. Overestimate of committed warming. Nature 547, E16–E17 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature22803 ^[15]
• Doh, S., King, J., Leinen, M. A rock-magnetic study of giant piston core LL4-GPC3 from the central North Pacific and its paleoceanographic implications Paleoceanography 3 (1): 89-111 ^[16]
• Rea, David K., Margaret Leinen, and Thomas R. Janecek. "Geologic approach to the long-term history of atmospheric circulation." Science 227.4688 (1985): 721-725. ^[17]
• Leinen, M., Prospero, J. M., Arnold, E., & Blank, M. (1994). Mineralogy of aeolian dust reaching the North Pacific Ocean: 1. Sampling and analysis. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 99(D10), 21017-21023. ^[18]