SHUKLA
RECEIVES CARL-GAUSTAF ROSSBY MEDAL
Dr. Jagadish Shukla,
Professor and Chair of the Climate Dynamics Program at George Mason University
and President of the Institute of Global Environment and Society has received
the 2005 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal of the American Meteorological
Society.
The Rossby Medal is presented to individuals on the basis
of outstanding contributions to the understanding of the structure or behavior
of the atmosphere. The award, in the form of a medallion, represents the highest
honor that the Society can bestow upon an atmospheric scientist. Dr. Shukla
is being recognized for “fundamental contributions and inspired leadership
in understanding the variability and predictability of the climate system
on seasonal to interannual time scales.”
Shukla received his Ph.D.
from Benaras Hindu University, India and his Sc.D. from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, USA. He has received the Walker Gold Medal of the
Indian Meteorological Society and the Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal
of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He is a Fellow of the
American Meteorological Society, a Fellow of the Indian Meteorological Society
and an Associate Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences. He is currently
a member of the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research
Program of the World Meteorological Organization.
Shukla is the author or
co-author of over 150 scientific papers. He has served as chairman or member of
numerous national and international panels and committees. He has made significant contributions to
the understanding of the predictability of short-term climate fluctuations
including the Asian monsoon. His scientific contributions include research on
monsoon dynamics, deforestation, desertification, tropical predictability, and
climate variability. His research has established that there is predictability
in the midst of chaos and that there is a scientific basis for short-term
climate prediction.
Shukla founded the Center
for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA), a premier scientific research center
devoted to developing an improved understanding of climate variability and
predictability on intraseasonal to decadal time scales within a changing
climate. The COLA scientists make major contributions to the independent
evaluation of the Nation’s leading models for climate change, provide
leadership within the research community working toward improved prediction of
climate, and highly valued and widely used information technology infrastructure
for the efficient exchange of climate model and observational data. COLA
scientists were the first to suggest the use of numerical weather prediction
models to reanalyze past observations of the atmosphere and oceans to produce
climate research data sets. They have advocated the importance of
land-atmosphere interactions in climate variability as well as the existence of
predictability for monthly and seasonal time scales. The group has made
significant contributions to the understanding of the Indian monsoon, the
climate effects of deforestation and desertification.
Shukla is a distinguished
professor in the School of Computational Sciences (SCS) and chair of the
Ph.D. program in Climate Dynamics. The SCS is the primary academic
unit of George Mason University (GMU) that integrates computation in the
natural sciences, mathematics, engineering and social sciences to advance
understanding of complex problems and find solutions for the benefit of
society.
Shukla was instrumental in
the creation of the weather and climate research group at the International
Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy and led the group’s activities
from their inception until 1997. He was the scientific leader who helped
establish the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting in New
Delhi, India and he helped in the establishment of several research
institutions in the USA and abroad. He helped establish the Gandhi College in
his birth village of Mirdha, India, for the education of rural students in the
Ballia district of Uttar Pradesh.
The Rossby Medal was
presented on Wednesday, 12 January 2005 at the 85th Annual Meeting
of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), being held in San Diego,
California. George Mason University
celebrated Shukla’s award on the evening of 25 January 2005 in the Atrium
of Mason Hall on the George Mason Campus.