Veerabhadran Ramanathan | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Veerabhadran Ramanathan | |
| Born | (1944-11-24)24 November 1944 (age 80)[1] Chennai,Madras Presidency, British India |
| Alma mater | Annamalai University IISc Stony Brook |
| Awards | • Buys Ballot Medal • Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal • Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement • BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award • Tang Prize |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Atmospheric Scientist |
| Institutions | Scripps Institution of Oceanography |
| Doctoral advisor | Robert Cess |
| Website | ramanathan |
Veerabhadran "Ram" Ramanathan (born 24 November 1944) holds the title of Professor Emeritus at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. He was Edward A. Frieman Endowed Presidential Chair in Climate SustainabilityScripps Institution of Oceanography,University of California, San Diego. He is also currently an adjunct professor in the Department of Global Development atCornell University.[2]He has contributed to many areas of the atmospheric andclimate sciences including developments togeneral circulation models, atmospheric chemistry, andradiative transfer. He has been a part of major projects such as theIndian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX) and theEarth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE), and is known for his contributions to the areas of climate physics, Climate Change and atmospheric aerosols research. He is now the Chair of Bending the Curve: Climate Change Solutions education project of University of California. He has received numerous awards, and is a member of theUS National Academy of Sciences. He has spoken about the topic ofglobal warming, and written that "the effect of greenhouse gases on global warming is, in my opinion, the most important environmental issue facing the world today."[3]
He is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, an organization established by the Vatican to promote scientific research and advise the Pope on scientific matters. He was appointed as an ordinary member on October 7, 2004, and serves on its council. In this capacity, he has personally advised Pope Francis on climate change issues. He was influential in the creation ofLaudato si', the Pope's encyclical onclimate change.[4]
Ramanathan was born inChennai, India. At the age of 11, he moved with his family toBangalore. The classes at the school he attended were taught in English, and not his nativeTamil. He admits that he "lost the habit of listening to my teachers and had to figure out things on my own".[5] He received his BE degree fromAnnamalai University, and ME degree from theIndian Institute of Science.[citation needed] In 1970, he arrived in the US to studyinterferometry at theState University of New York at Stony Brook under the direction ofRobert Cess.[citation needed] Before Ramanathan could begin working on his PhD research, Cess decided to change his research and focus on planetary atmospheres.[citation needed]
Ramanathan has contributed to many areas of the atmospheric sciences. His first major findings were in the mid-1970s and were related to thegreenhouse effect ofCFCs and other trace gases[6][7] Until that time,carbon dioxide was thought to be the solegreenhouse gas responsible forglobal warming. He also contributed to the early development of global circulation models[8] and the detecting and attribution of climate change.[9]
His focus then shifted to the radiative effects of clouds on the climate. This was done using theEarth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE), which showed that clouds have a large cooling effect on the planet.[10][11] ERBE was also able to measure the greenhouse effect without the use of climate models.[12]
Recently, he has published on theaerosol radiative properties. His work has shown that aerosols have a cooling effect on the surface of the planet, and at the top of the atmosphere, but the forcing at the top of the atmosphere was only one-third the magnitude as the surface forcing. This has implications for the hydrologic cycle.[13] While working on the Central Equatorial Pacific Experiment, he discovered that absorbingblack carbonaceous aerosols have a larger influence on climate than previously thought, which led to the development of theIndian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX).[14] In the 1990s, he led the Indian Ocean Experiment withPaul Crutzen and discovered the widespread existence ofatmospheric brown clouds covering much of the Indian Ocean region. They found that the vast majority of the aerosols were anthropogenic in origin, and that the surface cooling caused by the aerosols is more important than the atmospheric heating.[15] These atmospheric brown clouds may have masked as much as 50% of the surface heating caused by the increase in carbon dioxide, and caused reduced precipitation during the Indian monsoon.[16]
Ramanathan is also interested in the impact of climate change onagriculture inIndia. While atmospheric brown clouds partially offset the warming due from carbon dioxide, their effect on agriculture has been less certain. A statistical rice model couple to a regional climate model has shown that reductions of both carbon dioxide and atmospheric brown clouds will increase crop yield.[17]
He has also written onavoiding dangerous anthropogenic climate change. Ramanathan writes that there are severaltipping points in the climate system, and that they do not all occur at the same temperature threshold; the tipping point for the arctic summer sea ice is likely to be smaller than that for theWest Antarctic Ice Sheet. While the planet has seen an observed warming of 0.6 °C since pre-industrial times, it has already most likely committed itself to 2.4 °C (1.4 °C to 4.3 °C) of warming. These values surpass several of the tipping point thresholds.[18] In a 2014 paper, Ramanathan and co-authors suggested that mitigating methane, soot, ozone andhydrofluorocarbons in the atmosphere could reduce the expectedsea level rise due to climate change.[19]
In March 2007, Ramanathan wrote awhite paper with Balakrishnan on a potential project that will reduce air pollution and global warming.[20] Project Surya, which meansSun inSanskrit, will use inexpensivesolar cookers in rural India, and document the reductions in carbon dioxide and soot emissions. The byproducts of biofuel cooking and biomass burning are significant contributors to global warming, and the expanded use of renewable energy is expected to decrease their effects.
The burning of solid fuels causes substantial health risks as well. An estimated 440,000 deaths per year are attributed to unsanitary food preparation techniques due to aerosol exposure.[21] Over 3 billion people cook and heat their home by burning biomass such as wood andfeces. The project, costing an estimated $4.5 million, will buy 3,500 cookers and impact up to 15,000 people. As of November 2008, the project has not been funded.[22]
Project Surya was soft launched in March 2009. Each household in the village of Khairatpur,Uttar Pradesh received a biomass cook stoves and a solar lamp. Surya has since received $150,000 in funding fromUNEP.[23]
Ramanathan is anISI highly cited researcher.[24] He is a fellow of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science,American Meteorological Society andAmerican Geophysical Union. He became a member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995.[25] In 1995, theRoyal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences awarded him theBuys Ballot Medal.[26] In 2002, he was awarded theCarl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, "... for fundamental insights into the radiative roles of clouds, aerosols and key gases in the Earth's climate system." He was elected a member of theUS National Academy of Sciences in 2002 "... for fundamental contributions to our modern understanding of global climate change and human impacts on climate and environment",[27] an Academician of thePontifical Academy of Sciences in 2004, a member theAmerican Philosophical Society in 2006,[28] and a member of theRoyal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2008.[29]Also, Veerabhadran Ramanathan has been bestowed with theBBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award 2015 in the Climate Change category for discovering that human-produced gases and pollutants other than CO2 have a huge power to alter the Earth's climate, and that by acting on them it is possible to make a short-term dent on the rate of global warming. He received the prestigiousTang Prize for Sustainable Development in 2018. He was awarded the 90th annual Mendel Medal byVillanova University in 2018 for his work on climate change.[30] Ramanathan is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award (Champions of the Earth) in 2013.[31]
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