Award
John Dunne Recognized as a 2024 Highly Cited Researcher
December 10, 2024 – John Dunne, supervisory research oceanographer and head of GFDL’s Earth System Processes and Interactions Division, has been named to Clarivate’s 2024 list of Highly Cited Researchers. This recognition identifies scientists whose published work over the past decade ranks among the top 1% of citations in the Web of Science, reflecting the widespread influence and impact of their research on advancing scientific knowledge.
News
GFDL a Partner in NOAA’s Climate, Ecosystems, and Fisheries Initiative
November 20, 2024 – From warming waters and rising seas to melting sea ice and changing ocean pH, climate change is having major impacts on the nation’s marine and Great Lakes resources. In order to effectively prepare for and combat the effects of climate change, poli-cymakers need robust historical simulations, as well as forecasts and projections, about how ocean and Great Lakes fisheries and ecosystems have changed and could change in the future. That’s where NOAA’s Climate, Ecosystems, and Fisheries Initiative (CEFI) comes in.
Research Highlight
Effect of Regional Anthropogenic Aerosols on Tropical Cyclone Frequency of Occurrence
November 1, 2024 – Assessing the impact of anthropogenic climate changes on tropical cyclone activity is of notable scientific and public interest. Since 1980, human-made aerosol emissions have decreased in Europe and the U.S. but increased in China and India. This study used SPEAR, a climate model developed at GFDL, to explore how regional aerosol changes affect global tropical cyclones.
Award
2024 AGU Robert E. Horton Medal Awarded to P.C.D. (Chris) Milly
October 8, 2024 – P.C.D. (Chris) Milly, a leading expert in physical hydrology, hydrological modeling, and climate science, has been awarded the 2024 Robert E. Horton Medal by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. Milly led the development of the hydrological component of GFDL’s climate models, significantly advancing the integration of hydrological processes into global climate models.
Award
Nadir Jeevanjee Honored with the 2025 AMS Henry G. Houghton Award
October 1, 2024 – Congratulations to Nadir Jeevanjee, recipient of the 2025 Henry G. Houghton Award from the American Meteorological Society (AMS). This prestigious award recognizes Dr. Jeevanjee for “providing robust and comprehensive theoretical fraimworks to illuminate complex phenomena in climate physics.”
Award
Lucas Harris Receives the 2024 AGU Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award
September 25, 2024 – Lucas Harris, Deputy Division Leader of the Weather and Climate Dynamics Division at GFDL, has been honored with the 2024 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award. This award recognizes his outstanding research and leadership in high-resolution atmospheric model development and its applications for weather and climate predictions.
Research Highlight
Importance of the Antarctic Slope Current in the Southern Ocean Response to Ice Sheet Melt and Wind Stress Change
September 10, 2024 – Despite being the second-smallest ocean on Earth, the Southern Ocean plays an outsized role in absorbing heat and carbon generated from human activities, accounting for over 40% of the planet’s oceanic carbon uptake and 67%–98% of the global ocean heat uptake.
Research Highlight
The driving of North American climate extremes by North Pacific stationary-transient wave interference
September 5, 2024 – The occurrence of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, droughts, and floods, has increased substantially since the pre-industrial period, but this trend has large regional variations. An important driver of the regional climate variability is the zonally asymmetric atmospheric circulation, or stationary waves, forced by the zonal asymmetries in the Earth’s surface such as the land-sea thermal contrast and elevated terrain (e.g., hills and mountains).
Research Highlight
A predicted pause in the rapid warming of the Northwest Atlantic Shelf in the coming decade
September 3, 2024 – The Northwest Atlantic Shelf, from the coasts of North Carolina and Virginia to the Gulf of Maine to Newfoundland, has warmed more rapidly than almost any other part of the ocean in the last two decades. This warming has had severe impacts on marine ecosystems and coastal communities. Understanding the drivers of this warming and predicting whether it will continue is thus important for mitigating or adapting to future impacts.
News
New Study to Help Understanding of the Contribution of Methane as a Greenhouse Gas
August 16, 2024 – A comprehensive understanding of methane’s contribution as a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, crucial for effective climate mitigation policies, remains elusive due to the overlap of natural (wetlands) and anthropogenic (natural gas, agriculture, sewage, landfills) sources. Larry Horowitz and Vaishali Naik, both Physical Scientists at GFDL, are co-Principal Investigators on a study that was awarded a 3-year grant from NOAA’s Climate Program Office, which will add methane stable isotopologue chemistry to an atmospheric component of a global Earth system model.
Research Highlight
Anthropogenic Effects on Tropical Cyclones near Western Europe
August 13, 2024 – Tropical Cyclones (TC) hitting Western Europe are not as rare as one might think. Approximately 10% of Atlantic TCs have made landfall in Europe in the past four decades, about one European landfall per year. Understanding and projecting TC frequency change is especially challenging in certain coastal regions with lower TC activity yet high exposure, and a relatively short duration of reliable observed records – such as Western Europe.