Venkatachalam Ramaswamy

Biosketch

Venkatachalam (“Ram”) Ramaswamy is Director of NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton, and a Lecturer with the rank of Professor in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program at Princeton University. He earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s in Physics and Astrophysics from Delhi University (India) and PhD in Atmospheric Sciences from the State University of New York at Albany, and was a postdoctoral Fellow in the Advanced Study Program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He was a NOAA Council Fellow (“ST”, highest scientific rank in the Federal civil service) prior to becoming Director of GFDL. He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), American Geophysical Union (AGU), American Association for the Advancement of Science, and American Physical Society. He is a recipient of AMS Houghton, Roberts, and Rossby awards, AGU Charney Lecture, World Meteorological Organization (WMO) MUMM award (3 times), and the Presidential Meritorious and Distinguished Rank awards. He was a Lead Author on the 2nd (1995), 3rd (2001) and 4th (2007) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I Assessments. He was Vice-Chair of the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Program, and is a member of the WMO Executive Panel on Polar High Mountains Observations Research and Services. He was: Co-lead, International Committee on Space Research, “Observation and integrated Earth-System science”; Co-Chair, NRC Decadal Survey Panel on Climate Variability and Change; and Member, Informing Panel, NRC America’s Climate Choices.

Research Interests

Ram’s research is focused on the mathematical modeling and understanding of the effects of natural and human-influenced forcings on the coupled global Earth System (comprising the atmosphere-ocean-biosphere-cryosphere-ecosystems). His research has extracted the multi-faceted role of natural and anthropogenic emissions of aerosols in their optical, radiative, and microphysical effects, and the manner in which they force the system through scattering and absorption of radiation and interactions with clouds. He has investigated the competing effects of greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions in the Earth System, and their respective impacts on the thermal budget and hydrologic cycle over the past century, particularly in the context of anthropogenic forcing of climate change in Asia. Of current interest is Earth System predictions and projections, with a specific focus on regional weather patterns under climate variations and change on subseasonal-to-centennial timescales, and the downstream impacts on extremes (e.g., heat and humidity, extreme precipitation, drought, hurricanes and severe storms, sea-level rise, marine ecosystems).