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Biographical Sketches of Committee Members

Antonio J. Busalacchi, Jr. (Chair) is Director of the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) and Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research interests include tropical ocean circulation and its role in the coupled climate system, and climate variability and predictability. Dr. Busalacchi has been involved in the activities of the World Climate Research Program for many years and currently is co-chair of the scientific steering group for its subprogram on Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR). Dr. Busalacchi has extensive NRC experience as a member of the Climate Research Committee, the Committee on Earth Studies, the Panel on the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere (TOGA) Program, and the Panel on Ocean Atmosphere Observations Supporting Short-Term Climate Predictions. He holds a Ph.D. in oceanography from Florida State University.

Ana P. Barros is a professor of civil and environmental engineering in the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. Her research interest is in environmental physics investigating the dynamics of water presence and water pathways in the environment. The goal is to improve the understanding of the physics of the hydrological cycle at all spatial and temporal scales, and to apply this knowledge to research and develop technologies for environmental assessment, prediction and control. Dr. Barros’ work is interdisciplinary, and addresses fundamental engineering science questions in the areas of climate, hydrometeorology, geomorphology, ecology, hydraulics and hydrology, and their linkages to the environmental engineering sciences. Her research activities are conducted using computer models, signal processing and exploratory data analysis, and laboratory and field experiments. She previously served on the NRC Committee on USGS Water Resources Research (1997-2000) and the Space Studies Board (2002-2005).

Cecilia Bitz is an assistant professor in Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington. Her research interests include climate dynamics, climate change, paleoclimate, the role of sea ice in the climate system, Arctic/ North Atlantic interactions, global climate modeling, and sea ice model development. The primary tools for her research are a variety of climate models, from simple reduced models to sophisticated climate system models. Dr. Bitz earned her Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Washington in 1997. She previously served on the NRC’s US International Polar Year planning committee. She is a member of the advisory board to the Community Climate System Model and the scientific steering committee for the International Study of Arctic Change.

James A. Coakley, Jr. is a professor at Oregon State University's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences. His research concentrates on the Earth's energy budget and climate change with particular interest in the use of satellite observations to deduce the role played by clouds and aerosols in the climate system. Prior to working at OSU, he led the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Cloud-Climate Interaction Group and Satellite Data Analysis Group. He is a member of NASA's CALIPSO, CERES, and MODIS Science Teams. He has served as an Editor for the Journal of Climate, and on the editorial boards of Tellus and the Journal of Geophysical Research. He has also served on BASC's Committee on Meteorological Analysis, Prediction, and Research and on the Climate Panel for SSB's study of Earth Sciences Applications from Space. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Gabriele Hegerl is an Associate Research Professor in the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh. She holds a Ph.D. in applied mathematics (numerical fluid dynamics) from Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Dr. Hegerl's expertise lies in anthropogenic climate change, natural climate variability, and statistical techniques for climate research. The main area of her research is the natural variability of climate and changes in climate due to natural and anthropogenic changes in radiative forcing (such as greenhouse warming, climate effects of volcanic eruptions and changes in solar radiation). Specifically, her interests include detection of climate change in temperature and rainfall data, changes in temperature and rainfall extremes and their detection and attribution to external forcing. She is also interested in climate variability, particularly variability that influences climate on long timescales, and changes in modes of climate variability, such as the Northern and Southern Annular modes and their influence on temperature, rainfall, and climate extremes. Dr. Hegerl serves as coordinating lead author of the chapter on Understanding and Attributing Climate Change for the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on The Science of Global Warming, due out in 2007, and on various other panels.

Henry D. Jacoby is Professor of Management and Co-Director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. The Program integrates natural and social science aspects of global climate change, and policy and management studies, that are needed to support the development, negotiation, and implementation of a domestic and global response. He is the former Director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Associate Director of the MIT Energy Laboratory, and Chair of the MIT Faculty. Earlier he was Director of the Harvard Environmental Systems Program. Dr. Jacoby has made contributions to the study of policy and planning in the areas of energy, natural resources, and the environment. He was a member of the National Petroleum Council, and he served on the Climatic Impact Committee of the National Academy of Sciences and the AAAS Panel on Climate Change and Water Resources. He was also a member of the National Academy Committees on Alternative Energy R&D Strategies and Metrics for Global Change Research. He currently serves on the Scientific Committee of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. His current research is focused on economic analysis of climate change and greenhouse gas mitigation, and the integration of this work with the natural science of the issue.

Anthony C. Janetos is the director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute, a joint venture between the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Maryland. Prior to this position, he served as vice president of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment. Dr. Janetos also directed the center's Global Change program. Before coming to The Heinz Center, he served as vice president for science and research at the World Resources Institute and senior scientist for the Land-Cover and Land-Use Change Program in NASA's Office of Earth Science. He was also program scientist for NASA's Landsat 7 mission. He has had many years of experience in managing scientific research programs on a variety of ecological and environmental topics, including air pollution effects on forests, climate change impacts, land-use change, ecosystem modeling, and the global carbon cycle. He was a co-chair of the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, and an author of the IPCC Special Report on Land-Use Change and Forestry, the Fourth Assessment Report of IPCC, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and the Global Biodiversity Assessment. Dr. Janetos recently served on the NRC Committee for the Decadal Survey for Earth Sciences and Applications from Space, and has been a member of several other NRC Committees, including the NRC Committee for Review of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan, the Committee on Review of Scientific Research Programs at the Smithsonian Institution (2002), and the Committee on Ecological Indicators for the Nation.

Robert Lempert is a senior scientist at RAND and an expert in science and technology policy, with a special focus on climate change, energy, and the environment. An expert in the field of decision making under conditions of deep uncertainty, Dr. Lempert is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is principal investigator for a major effort on climate change decision making, and has led studies on climate change policy, the environment, energy, national security strategies, and on science and technology investment strategies for clients that include the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and several multinational firms. A Professor of Policy Analysis in the RAND Graduate School, Dr. Lempert is an author of the recent book Shaping the Next One Hundred Years: New Methods for Quantitative, Longer-Term Policy Analysis.

Roger Lukas obtained his Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Hawaii in 1981 and is currently a Professor at the University of Hawaii, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. His research focuses on ocean-atmosphere interaction, seasonal-to-decadal climate variability, and ocean physics. Dr. Lukas was a member of the Ocean Studies Board and has participated in several NRC studies, including two studies related to ocean observing systems. As a member of one of these Advisory Panels, he helped shape the overall TOGA program in its evolution. He also served on the NAS Advisory Panel for Global Ocean-Atmosphere-Land System (GOALS), where he helped lead the scientific and implementation planning for the Austral-Asian Monsoon component of GOALS, in close collaboration with the World Climate Research Programme's new CLIVAR program. Together with David Karl, Dr. Lukas has conducted the Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT) program since 1988, with funding by the National Science Foundation under the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) and JGOFS programs. With Peter Webster, he co-chaired the scientific steering committee for the TOGA Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment (1992-1994) in the warm pool region of the western Pacific.

Linda O. Mearns is a Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado and Director of the Institute for the Study of Society and Environment. She holds a Ph.D. in Geography/Climatology from the University of California at Los Angeles. She has performed research and published in the areas of crop-climate interactions, climate change scenario formation, climate change impacts on agro-ecosystems, analysis of climate variability and extreme climate events in both observations and climate models, and quantifying uncertainty in regional climate change projections. She has particularly worked extensively with regional climate models. She has contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1992, 1995, and 2001 Reports on the subjects of climate variability in general circulation models, regional climate change, and climate scenario formation. She currently is a Lead Author in Working Groups 1 and 2 for the the Fourth Assessment Report. She served on the National Academies Panel on Climate, Ecosystems, Infectious Diseases, and Human Health, and she currently serves on the Institute of Medicine Panel on Emerging Infectious Diseases of the 21st Century. She currently is also a member of the NRC Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change.

Gerald A. Meehl is a Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Climate and Global Dynamics Division. He received his MA and PhD in Climate Dynamics from the University of Colorado. His major research tasks have involved two broad ongoing activities: (1) analysis and interpretation of results from various global climate model experiments (both coupled and uncoupled model versions), and (2) analysis and interpretation of observed data, often attempting to relate the observed results to characteristics of model simulations. Dr. Meehl is a member of the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the Pacific Science Association and a 1999 recipient of the Journal of Climate’s Editor’s Award. He previously served on the NRC's Panel on Climate Observing Systems Status.

Joyce E. Penner is a professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Sciences, and director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric Science and Environmental Research at the University of Michigan. Dr. Penner's research focuses on improving climate models through the addition of interactive chemistry and the description of aerosols and their direct and indirect effects on the radiation balance in climate models. She is also interested in urban, regional, and global tropospheric chemistry and budgets, cloud and aerosol interactions and cloud microphysics, climate and climate change, model development and interpretation. Dr. Penner has been a member of numerous advisory committees related to atmospheric chemistry, global change, and Earth science. She is currently Vice Chair of the Panel on Climate Variability and Change for the NRC’s decadal survey, Earth, Science and Applications from Space. She formerly was a member of the NRC Committee on Metrics for Global Change Research, and served on the Committee on Research Priorities for Airborne Particulate Matter (1997-2004), the Committee on Geophysical and Environmental Data (1995-2000), and the Committee for Review of the Science Implementation Plan of the NASA Office of Earth Science (2000). Dr. Penner is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

Richard Richels directs global climate change research at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, California. His current research focus is the economics of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. In previous assignments, he directed EPRI's energy analysis, environmental risk, and utility planning research activities. Dr. Richels has served as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Second, Third and Fourth Scientific Assessments and served on the Synthesis Team for the US National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on the United States. He also served on the Scientific Steering Committee for the US Carbon Cycle Program. He currently serves on the Advisory Committee for Princeton University's Carbon Mitigation Initiative and Carnegie-Mellon University's Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change. Dr. Richels received a B.S. degree in Physics from the College of William and Mary in 1968. He was awarded an M.S. degree in 1973 and Ph.D. degree in 1976 from Harvard University's Division of Applied Sciences where he concentrated in Decision Sciences. While at Harvard he was a member of the Energy and Environmental Policy Center.

Taro Takahashi holds his Ph.D. from Columbia University in earth science. He is an adjunct professor in earth and environmental sciences and a Doherty Senior Scholar in the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. He is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and an international leader in the study of what happens to industrial carbon dioxide released in the air and how it is affected by the complex interactions between ocean circulation, marine ecosystems, and land-sea-air processes. His research group measures carbon dioxide and related quantities in the world oceans, from the Arctic to Antarctic regions, to learn how fast atmospheric carbon dioxide is transferred into the different areas of the oceans. These measurements provide basic information on how carbon dioxide is cycled through the oceans and atmosphere and how these cycles are affected in response to industrial carbon dioxide being accumulated at ever-increasing rates. Dr. Takahashi has recently been involved with a Department of Energy project, where he conducts research on a long-term sequestration of industrial carbon dioxide in geological formations to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. He has also been a member of two NRC committees – the Committee on Oceanic Carbon (1992-1995) and the Panel on CO2 (1988-1991).

Lonnie G. Thompson is a glaciologist at Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center. His research focuses on searching glacial ice for clues to global warming, and he uses new technologies in the emerging science of paleoclimatology. Dr. Thompson made his first expedition to glaciers in December 1973 to Antarctica and he has been on more than 50 glaciological research expeditions since then. Dr. Thompson pioneered studies of Quaternary climate change recorded in low-latitude alpine icecaps. His work on ice cores led to a fundamental shift in thinking about the importance of the tropics in global climate change. He was elected to the advisory board of the International Glaciological Society in 1999 Thompson was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2001 and was named a 2002 Distinguished University Professor from Ohio State and elected to elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.