Ram Ramaswamy

Venkatachalam “Ram” Ramaswamy is a central figure in climate science. From 1992 to 2021, Ram has been a Lead Author, Coordinating Lead Author, or Review Editor for each of the major assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change. He has also been a Coordinating Lead Author on the World Meteorological Organization assessments on stratospheric ozone and climate, and the first US Climate Change Science Program (Global Change Research Program) assessment. A Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Ram has also been involved in the leadership of the US Global Change Research Program’s Interagency Group on Integrative Modeling and the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Program.

Ram took the helm at GFDL in 2008, as the lab’s fourth director. He says leading the lab requires the flexibility to let folks pursue their research interests while fulfilling NOAA mission objectives, and being constantly aware that it can take many years for basic research to be ready for inclusion in GFDL’s models. Advances in basic sciences (e.g., processes, mechanisms) are pivotal for improvements in modeling, understanding, and predictions. The challenge is knowing how to support basic research and shape it into cutting-edge GFDL models for weather, climate, and the Earth System.