| 1 | Name: | Dr. V. Ramanathan | |
| Institution: | Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego | ||
| Year Elected: | 2006 | ||
| Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 105. Physical Earth Sciences | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1944 | ||
V. (Ram) Ramanathan is the Victor C. Alderson Professor of Applied Ocean Sciences & Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), University of California, San Diego, where he also directs the Center for Atmospheric Sciences. He is the Chairman of the UNEP sponsored Atmospheric Brown Cloud Project and was the co-chief scientist for the Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX), which led to the discovery of the South Asian brown haze. Dr. Ramanathan has made fundamental contributions to our modern understanding of global climate change and human impacts on climate and environment. He is widely recognized for establishing the impacts of non-CO2 trace gases in climate, particularly the contributions of chlorofluorocarbons as well as tropospheric and stratospheric ozone and for his research in understanding the effects of water vapor, clouds and aerosols in global climate change. More recently he demonstrated that soot can play an unexpectedly large role in global dimming. His work on the trace gas greenhouse effect linked chemistry in a fundamental way to climate, while his work on the radiative effects of tropospheric ozone and soot linked air pollution strongly with global warming. He was the first to demonstrate in 1975 that CFCs are major greenhouse gases and that adding one molecule of CFC to the atmosphere has the same greenhouse effect of adding more than 10,000 molecules of CO2. He then led a WMO study which concluded that numerous trace gases are significant contributors to global warming. He followed this up by predicting (with Madden) in 1980 that the global warming would be detectable by 2000, which was subsequently verified in 2001. He led innovative efforts to distinguish the effects of infrared absorption and reflection both by clouds and clear skies using global satellite data, and thereby provided new observational constraints on the influence of clouds in the Earth's energy budget. He also used the satellite data to show that water vapor greenhouse effect was a major amplifier of global warming. With Pitcher, et al., he played a key role in developing the first community climate model, now the major American climate simulation research model. During the 1990s, he designed and conducted two international field experiments, the Central Equatorial Pacific experiment with J. Kuettner and the Indian Ocean experiment with P. J. Crutzen. With INDOEX scientists from the U.S., Europe and India, he showed that black carbon and other aerosols in the widespread South Asian brown haze led to a large reduction of solar radiation reaching the surface (dimming) and increased solar heating of atmosphere with significant impacts on regional climate and monsoon rainfall. He is now studying the effects of Atmospheric Brown Clouds over Asia, including their effects on water and regional climate. For this purpose he is developing an observing system with light weight and long range unmanned aircraft vehicles with miniaturized instruments. He has received numerous honors including: the Buys Ballot Medal of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences given once every decade; the VOLVO environmental prize for pioneering work related to the greenhouse effect; the Rossby Medal which is the highest award given by the American Meteorological Society; induction into the National Academy of Sciences in April 2003; election by Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 2004; the 2018 Mendel Medal from Villanova University; and the 2021 Blue Planet Prize of Japan's Asahi Glass Foundation. He has served on numerous national and international committees and has given expert testimonies in the U.S. Congress. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2006. | |||