Subdivision
| • | 105. Physical Earth Sciences | [X] |
| | 1 | Name: | Dr. William H. Hooke | | | Institution: | American Meteorological Society | | | Year Elected: | 2006 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 105. Physical Earth Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1943 | | | | | | |
William H. Hooke was a senior policy fellow at the American Meteorological Society from 2000-2022, and director of the Policy Program from 2001-2022. His current policy research interests include: natural disaster reduction; historical precedents as they illuminate present-day policy; and the nature and implications of changing national requirements for weather and climate science and services. He also directs AMS policy education programs, including the AMS Summer Policy Colloquium, and the AMS-UCAR Congressional Science Fellowship Program. From 1967-2000, Dr. Hooke worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and antecedent agencies. After six years of research in fundamental geophysical fluid dynamics and its application to the ionosphere, the boundary layer, air quality, aviation, and wind engineering, he moved into a series of management positions of increasing scope and responsibility. From 1973-80, he was Chief of the Wave Propagation Laboratory Atmospheric Studies Branch; from 1980-83 he rotated through a series of management development assignments; and from 1984-87 he directed NOAA's Environmental Sciences Group (now the Forecast Systems Lab), responsible for much of the systems R&D for the NWS Modernization, as well as a range of other weather and climate research activities. From 1987-93 he served as the Deputy Chief Scientist and Acting Chief Scientist of NOAA, setting policy and direction for $300M/year of NOAA R&D in oceanography, atmospheric science, hydrology, climate, marine biology, and associated technologies. Between 1993 and 2000, he held two national responsibilities: Director of the U.S. Weather Research Program Office, and Chair of the interagency Subcommittee for Natural Disaster Reduction of the National Science and Technology Council Committee on Environment and Natural Resources. Dr. Hooke was an adjunct faculty member at the University of Colorado from 1969-87 and served as a fellow of two NOAA Joint Institutes (CIRES, 1971-1977; CIRA 1987-2000). The author of over fifty refereed publications and co-author of one book, Dr. Hooke holds a B.S. (Physics Honors) from Swarthmore College (1964) and S.M. (1966) and Ph.D (1967) degrees from the University of Chicago. He is a Fellow of the AMS and a member of the American Philosophical Society. Currently, he chairs the NAS/NRC Disasters Roundtable and serves on the ICSU Planning Group on Natural and Human-Induced Environmental Hazards and Disasters. | |
| 2 | 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. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Lonnie G. Thompson | | | Institution: | Ohio State University | | | Year Elected: | 2006 | | | Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 105. Physical Earth Sciences | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1948 | | | | | | |
Lonnie G. Thompson is one of the world's foremost authorities on paleo-climatology and glaciology. He has led more than 50 expeditions during the last 30 years, conducting ice-core drilling programs in the world's polar regions as well as in tropical and subtropical ice fields. Recently, Dr. Thompson and his team developed lightweight solar-powered drilling equipment for the acquisition of histories from ice fields in the high Andes of Peru and on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. The results of these histories, published in more that 180 articles, have contributed greatly toward the understanding of the Earth's past, present and future climate system. Other Thompson-led expeditions have recovered a 460-meter-long ice core, the world's longest from a mountain range (Alaska, 2002); the first tropic ice core (Peru, 1983); and cores containing the entire sequence of the Last Glacial Stage as well as cores dating over 750,000 years in age, the oldest outside the polar regions (Tibet, 1992).
Dr. Thompson's research has resulted in major revisions in the field of paleoclimatology, in particular, by demonstrating how tropical regions have undergone significant climate variability, countering an earlier view that higher latitudes dominate climate change. Dr. Thompson has received numerous honors and awards. In 2005, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and was awarded the John and Alice Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. In 2019 he became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been selected by Time magazine and CNN as one of "America's Best" in science and medicine. His research has been featured in hundreds of publications, including National Geographic and the National Geographic Adventure magazines. He and his team are the subject of a new book entitled: Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World's Highest Mountains by Mark Bowen published in late 2005. In 2006, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society and was also chosen to receive the Roy Chapman Andrews Society 2007 Distinguished Explorer Award. He has received the nation's highest honor in science, the 2005 National Medal of Science, and the 2012 Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute. Lonnie Thompson was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2006. | |
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