Veerabhadran Ramanathan is a distinguished professor of Atmospheric and Climate Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. In 1975, he discovered the super greenhouse effect of Chlorofluorocarbons (also known as freons used as refrigerants). Along with R. Madden, he predicted in 1980 that global warming would be detected by 2000. In 1989, he led a NASA study that used satellite instruments to show that clouds had a large global cooling effect. He led an international field experiment in the 1990s that discovered the widespread Atmospheric Brown Clouds (ABCs) over S. Asia, which have devastating health and climate impacts. He developed light-weight unmanned aerial vehicles to track pollution plumes from S. Asia, E. Asia and N. America. His most recent discovery is that mitigation of short-lived climate pollutants (black carbon, methane, ozone and HFCs) will slow down global warming significantly during this century. The United Nations and 30 countries, including USA, have now adopted this proposal and a new coalition, called the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, is implementing mitigation actions for short-lived climate pollutants. He now leads Project Surya, which is mitigating black carbon and other climate warming emissions from solid biomass cooking in S. Asia and Kenya and is documenting their effects on public health and environment. He has now embarked on India-California Air Pollution Mitigation Program sponsored by the World Bank and endorsed by Governor Jerry Brown. ICAMP will adopt California’s field-tested methodologies to reduce soot and particulate emissions from vehicles in India. He is now starting the most ambitious effort of his career: focusing on the plight of the bottom 3 billion people who will suffer the worst consequences of climate change and developed a new approach, called The Two Worlds Approach, in which he is showing how the top one billion, for their own self interest, should provide clean/renewable energy access to the bottom 3 billion.
In 2014, Foreign Policy Journal included Ramanathan among the top 100 thought leaders of the world. In 2013, he was awarded the top environment prize from the United Nations, the Champion of Earth for Science and Innovation [www.unep.org/champions]. He has won numerous other prestigious awards, including the Tyler Prize, which is the top environment prize given in the US; the Volvo Prize; the Rossby Prize, and the Zayed Prize. He has been elected to the US National Academy of Sciences, American Philosophical Society, the Pontifical Academy by Pope John Paul II, The World Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. In 2013, he was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which nominates and awards the Nobel Prizes in the science categories.
He is now serving in Pope Francis’ Council for the Pontifical Academy of Sciences; and UNESCO awarded the Climate and Policy professorship at TERI Deemed- University in New Delhi, India. He co-organized a 2014 historic Vatican meeting on “Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature” of social and natural scientists, philosophers and policy makers. He briefed Pope Francis in person on the highlights of the meeting. He is now helping Amma, the great spiritual leader from India, to organize a 2015-summit of leaders from science, policy, politics and religion on climate change.