At its December 2021 fall meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) recognized its newest group of award recipients.
The honorees included five researchers with recent ties to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility and Atmospheric System Research (ASR).
AGU Fellows
ARM users Venkatachalam (V.) Chandrasekar, Paul DeMott, and Harindra Joseph Fernando are among 59 people in the 2021 class of AGU Fellows. The honor goes to AGU members who have made outstanding career contributions in earth and space science.
Chandrasekar is a professor of electrical and computer engineering and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University. AGU cited his “pioneering observations, discoveries, and cross-disciplinary research in cloud and precipitation science, technologies, and methods.” He is applying his radar expertise as a co-investigator for ARM’s Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory (SAIL) campaign in Colorado.
From 2018 to 2021, Chandrasekar co-led an ASR-funded project on secondary ice production in continental clouds. The project used data from ARM’s 2014 Biogenic Aerosols – Effects on Clouds and Climate (BAECC) campaign in Finland.
DeMott, a longtime ARM user, is a senior research scientist in Colorado State University’s atmospheric chemistry program. He received his AGU honor “for fundamental advances in understanding and measurement of ice-nucleating particles and their impacts on clouds and climate.” DeMott previously led ASR-funded projects on ice nuclei affecting the U.S. West Coast and the Southern Ocean.
DeMott’s latest ASR-funded project aims to improve the representation of aerosol-cloud interactions in global earth system models. The project relies on data from past ARM campaigns in the Southern Ocean, the Arctic, and North and South America.
Fernando is the Wayne and Diana Murdy Endowed Professor of Engineering and Geosciences at the University of Notre Dame. AGU honored Fernando “for seminal contributions to understanding and modeling flow and transport in oceanic and lower atmospheric boundary layers interfacing the land surface.”
In November 2020, Fernando led an ARM campaign in Alaska, the Ice Fog Field Experiment at Oliktok Point (IFFExO). Researchers are using IFFExO data to better understand and quantify microphysical processes that underlie the ice-fog life cycle.
Ascent Awards
ARM users Kerri Pratt and Nicole Riemer received the AGU Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award. The award goes to midcareer scientists affiliated with AGU’s Atmospheric Sciences section or subsection. Recipients of the award have shown excellence in research and leadership within the atmospheric and climate sciences.
Pratt, an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Michigan, has led ARM aerosol campaigns in Alaska. Her current work includes analyzing particles measured on the North Slope of Alaska and those collected during the 2019–2020 Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Early Career Research Program and ASR support Pratt’s ARM-related work.
Riemer, a professor and aerosol modeler at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, uses ARM data in her research, which involves simulating aerosols down to the level of individual particles. Riemer also serves as co-chair for ASR’s Aerosol Processes Working Group. The group tracks developments and emerging needs in aerosol research.
During the AGU Fall Meeting, Riemer and Pratt presented as part of a session highlighting work by the Ascent midcareer and James R. Holton early career award winners.
See the full list of 2021 AGU section awardees and named lecturers.
Nominate Your Peers for 2022 Awards
Nominations for AGU 2022 section awards and union honors are open until April 1.
The 2022 AGU Fall Meeting is scheduled for December 12 to 16 in Chicago, Illinois.
# # #Author: Michelle Prichard, Staff Writer, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
ARM is a DOE Office of Science user facility operated by nine DOE national laboratories.