Ramanathan is director of the Scripps Center for Clouds, Chemistry, and Climate and professor of climate and atmospheric sciences. He also holds the Victor C. Alderson Chair of Applied Ocean Science. He has been affiliated with Scripps since 1990.
"Ramanathan's work is transforming our understanding of the climate change dilemma facing humankind," said Scripps Director Charles F. Kennel. "We must now be concerned with how the growing concentration of greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere combines with the atmospheric brown cloud of air pollution that Ramanathan and his collaborators discovered. We now can see a direct relationship between pollution, climate change and human health. Climate change affects every human being on earth and all its living things. It is entirely fitting that the Pontifical Academy, with its global perspective, has honored Ramanathan."
Ramanathan's research focuses on global climate dynamics, aerosols, the greenhouse effect, clouds and satellite remote sensing. In 1975 he became the first to demonstrate that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are major greenhouse gases and significant contributors to global warming. He is currently co-chief scientist of Project Atmospheric Brown Cloud, a cooperative research project of the United Nations Environment Programme, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and participating member nations, to study the mixture of pollutants formed by fossil fuel combustion and rural biomass burning.
Ramanathan's previous honors include the 2002 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal from the American Meteorological Society, the
'"/>
Contact: Dora Dalton
scrippsnews@ucsd.edu
858-534-3624
University of California - San Diego
25-Oct-2004