Minghua Zhang, V. Ramanathan, Robert D. Cess
To honor our Distinguished Professor Emeritus Robert D. Cess, ITPA established the distinguished TAOS seminar speaker program by naming a speaker after him each year. We are pleased to announce that this year’s Robert. D. Cess Distinguished TAOS seminar speaker is Dr. V. Ramanathan.
Dr. Ramanathan is a distinguished professor of atmospheric sciences and the director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego (La Jolla, CA). He pioneered several areas of research in atmospheric science that stimulated many subsequent research projects and field experiments. These include the greenhouse effect of CFCs, the atmospheric thermostat hypothesis, the Asian Brown Clouds, and the solar dimming. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002, He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Society, and American Geophysical Union. In 2004, he was elected to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican by Pope John Paul II. Dr. Ramanathan is the current cochief scientist of the Atmospheric Brown Cloud Project, past cochief scientist of the Indian Ocean Experiment, past chief scientist of the Central Equatorial Pacific Experiment, and the principal investigator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Radiation Budget Experiment.
Dr. Ramanathan’s seminar was given on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 with the title “Atmospheric Brown Clouds and Global Warming: A Double Threat for Asia?”
