Earth System Atlas: Steering Committee
Warren Washington
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Dr. Warren M. Washington is a senior scientist and head of the Climate Change Research Section in the Climate and Global Dynamics Division at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Warren specializes in computer modeling of the earth's climate. He has published more than 100 papers in professional journals. His book, An Introduction to Three-Dimensional Climate Modeling, co-authored with Claire Parkinson (NASA), is a reference on climate modeling. The second edition was published in May, 2005.
A consultant and advisor to a number of government officials and committees on climate system modeling, Warren's current research involves the Parallel Climate Model (PCM) and the Community Climate System Model (CCSM). He currently serves as a co-chair of the Climate Change Working Group within CCSM. The Parallel Climate Model is a Department of Energy (DOE) supported effort and the Community Climate System Model is supported by both the National Science Foundation and the DOE.
Michael Mann
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Dr. Michael E. Mann is a member of the Pennsylvania State University faculty, holding joint positions in the Departments of Meteorology and Geosciences, and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (ESSI). He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC).
Michael received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University. His research focuses on the application of statistical techniques to understanding climate variability and climate change from both empirical and climate model-based perspectives. Current areas of research include paleoclimate data synthesis and statistical climate reconstruction using climate proxy data networks, and model/data comparisons aimed at understanding the long-term behavior of the climate system and its relationship with possible external (including anthropogenic) forcings of climate.
Ruth DeFries
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Ruth DeFries is a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park with joint appointments in the Department of Geography and the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center. Her research investigates the relationships between human activities, the land surface, and the biophysical and biogeochemical processes that regulate the Earth's habitability. She is interested in observing land cover and land use change at regional and global scales with remotely sensed data and exploring the implications for ecological services such as climate regulation, the carbon cycle, and biodiversity.
Ruth obtained a Ph.D. in 1980 from the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor's degree in 1976 from Washington University with a major in earth science. Previously, she worked at the National Research Council with the Committee on Global Change and taught at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. She is a fellow of the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program and was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2006.
Robert Costanza
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Dr. Robert Costanza is the Gund Professor of Ecological Economics and Director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont. Prior to moving to Vermont in August 2002, he was director of the University of Maryland Institute for Ecological Economics, and a professor in the Center for Environmental Science, at Solomons, and in the Biology Department at College Park. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Florida in 1979 in systems ecology, with a minor in economics. He also has a Masters degree in Architecture and Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Florida.
Robert's research has focused on the interface between ecological and economic systems, particularly at larger temporal and spatial scales. This includes landscape level spatial simulation modeling; analysis of energy and material flows through economic and ecological systems; valuation of ecosystem services, biodiversity, and natural capital; and analysis of dysfunctional incentive systems and ways to correct them.
Jill Jaeger
Jill Jaeger has worked as a consultant on energy, environment, and climate for numerous national and international organizations.
In September 1994, she joined the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA, Laxenburg) as Deputy Director for Programs, where she was responsible for the implementation and coordination of the research program. From October 1996 till May 1998 she was Deputy Director of IIASA.
From April 1999 till October 2002, Jill was Executive Director of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP: www.ihdp.org). Her main field of interest is in the linkages between science and policy in the development of responses to global environmental issues.
Larry Mayer
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Larry Mayer has a broad-based background in marine geology and geophysics that is reflected in his association with both the Ocean Engineering and Earth Science Departments at the University of New Hampshire.
Larry has participated in more than 50 cruises (over 60 months at sea!) during the last 30 years and has been chief or co-chief scientist of numerous expeditions including two legs of the Ocean Drilling Program. He has served on, or chaired, far too many international panels and committees and has the requisite large number of publications on a variety of topics in marine geology and geophysics. He is the recipient of the Keen Medal for Marine Geology and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Stockholm. He served on the President's Panel for Ocean Exploration and has recently chaired a National Academy of Sciences committee on “National Needs for Coastal Mapping and Charting.” His research deals with sonar imaging, remote characterization of the seafloor, and advanced applications of 3-D visualization to ocean mapping problems.
Ferris Webster
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Ferris Webster is Professor of Oceanography in the College of Marine and Earth Studies of the University of Delaware. He was born in Canada and received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Physics at the University of Alberta. He obtained a Ph.D. in Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961. Beginning then at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, he held a number of scientific positions, becoming Senior Scientist in 1970, Chairman of the Physical Oceanography Department in 1971, and Associate Director for Research in 1973. During this period, he spent a sabbatical year at the National Institute of Oceanography in England.
Between 1978 and 1982, Ferris served as Assistant Administrator for Research and Development of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In 1982, he became a Senior Fellow with the National Research Council. He joined the University of Delaware in 1983, where he serves as Director of the Oceanography Program. Since 1994 he has served as chairman of the Panel on World Data Centers of the International Council for Science.
Webster's research interests include the role of the ocean in climate change, ocean variability, time-series analysis, and oceanographic data management and processing. He has contributed to the study of time-variable ocean currents, and has studied the processes of Gulf Stream meanders. Most of his current work involves data management and computer-based information management systems for the Global Observing Systems.
Navin Ramankutty
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Navin Ramankutty holds a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Land-Use and Land-Cover Change in the Department of Geography & Earth System Science Program at McGill University. His research interests focus on understanding the consequences of human activities for the sustainability of critical ecosystem goods and services. In particular, he study the impacts of human land use and land cover change on the structure and function of terrestrial ecosystems, and in turn, the effect of those impacts on the vital services that humans derive from ecosystems.
Navin employs a combination of remote-sensing observations, geospatial data analysis and numerical models to develop contemporary and historical data sets of global land use practices such as tropical deforestation and agricultural expansion/intensification. The environmental consequences of these changes are assessed using numerical models of the Earth's terrestrial ecosystems, often coupled to global climate models, to help understand the consequences of land use activities for the global carbon cycle, food production, water resources, and climate.
Stuart Gaffin
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Stuart Gaffin is an Associate Research Scientist at the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia
University. Prior to joining Columbia in 2001, he was a senior scientist in the Atmosphere Program at the
Environmental Defense Fund, NYC from 1989. PENDING His Ph.D. was in Atmospheric and Paleoclimate Studies
from the former Earth Systems Group at New York University. His current areas of research include:
- the urban heat island effect and the role of urban vegetation (especially green roofs) as a mitigation strategy
- greenhouse gas emissions scenarios and their relation to air pollution and regional population changes, and
- downscaling and high-resolution projection techniques for socio-economic projections including population and GDP growth.
Stuart taught the first course offered by Columbia University on green roofs in Spring 2005. He was a lead author on the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) set of emissions scenarios, known as the "SRES" scenarios. He is the author of many peer reviewed journal articles, and has participated in numerous media and public forums on global change science and policy.
Wolfgang Cramer
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Wolfgang Cramer is Department Head of the Department of Global Change and Natural Systems at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Wolfgang's research interests include global biosphere dynamics and feedbacks between the biosphere and the rest of the Earth System (including human society), and the vulnerability of ecosystems to global change. The overriding theme of his work focuses on the role of abiotic forcings on terrestrial ecosystem dynamics. During the last 10 years, Wolfgang has devoted considerable effort to the development of suitable modelling techniques for the assessment of broad-scale biospheric responses to changes in climate and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. His research group at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research develops assessment tools for global change impacts on the terrestrial biosphere (dynamic global vegetation models), water resources (catchment and basin scale models of water availability and quality), forests (dynamics of natural and managed forests) and agricultural crops (mechanistic model of cereal growth and phenology). More information about the projects is available here.
Since 1994, Wolfgang has been a member of a task force charged with co-ordinating activities towards developing a functioning Earth System Model. Since 1997, he has also been a member of the Executive Committee and the Scientific Steering Committee of Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems (GCTE) at Stanford University where he is focus leader (Ecosystem Structure).
Michel Meybeck
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Michel Meybeck is Senior Scientist at the Center for Climate Systems Research at the CNRS, the French National Center for Research, although he is based at Sisyphe, a joint CNRS-University Pierre and Marie Curie (Paris 6) laboratory in the Paris Latin Quarter.
Michel's interests revolve around human impacts on water quality, and his current research includes a continuation of riverine chemistry case studies, and seeks to develop a network of Internet sites covering many aspects of global river degredation (e.g. long term trends of river quality, of total suspended solids, and spatial distribution of surface water quality in large river basins).
Michel holds the distinction of being the first person to first vocalize the need for an Earth System Atlas along the lines of the project currently under construction.
Colin Prentice
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Colin Prentice is Professor of Earth System Science in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol, U.K.
Colin is Leader of QUEST programme, a U.K. project funded by the National Environment Research Council (NERC) to help quantify Earth system processes and feedbacks for better informed assessments of alternative futures of the global environment.
As leader of the Nature QUEST programme, Colin promotes research on the vulnerability of human activities to climate change. His own group has developed a methodology to represent probabilistic outcomes from climate and biosphere models, which show sharply increasing probabilities of water supply reductions in e.g. southern Africa, China and the eastern United States. As an ecosystem modeler, Colin is also studying how freshwater runoff is affected by plant physiology changes brought about by changes in carbon dioxide and climate.
Dork Sahagian
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Dork Sahagian is Director of the Environmental Initiative , based at Lehigh University. Before moving to Lehigh, he directed the integrative branch of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) which combines physical/chemical, biological, and social aspects of the Earth system. Now at Lehigh, he is working to bring together the faculty and students interested in environmental issues to form a coherent program involving academics and research to help understand the driving mechanisms, processes, social/ecologic impacts, and technical/behavioral mitigation/adaptation strategies to environmental changes at all scales.
Dork conducts research and has published numerous journal articles on subjects that include sea level, paleotempestology (hurricanes), volcanology, tectonics, hydrology, the carbon cycle, stratigraphy, computerized object recognition, and human perturbations of the Earth system. In addition to organizing the Environmental Initiative, he teaches "Introduction to Environmental Science (ES2)" in Spring terms. Professor Sahagian also advises students enrolled in the Environmental Studies program.
Bryan Lawrence
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Bryan Lawrence is Head the British Atmospheric Data Centre BADC, based at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Educated in New Zealand at the University of Canterbury, he graduated with a first class honours degree in physics. He subsequenctly obtained his doctorate in atmospheric science and took a post-doctoral Research Associate position in the Physics Department at Oxford University in the U.K. where he worked on satellite data analysis and numerical modelling.
In 1994, Bryan took up an Atlas Research Fellowship at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) near Oxford where he ultimately became Head of the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC). His main role is to provide intellectual and management leadership for the BADC, but he also serves on many national committees, mainly for the Natural Environement Research Council (NERC), but also for the Joint Infrastructure Services Committee (JISC) and other organisations. Bryan leads an active research group which specialises in both atmospheric physics and the application of computer science techniques in atmospheric physics. In the latter area, he is currently concentrating on aspects of eScience in the development of the NERC DataGrid NDG.
Bryan is pictured here with his new-born son Evan.
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