Scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan yearned for the American dream whereas rising up in southern India in the Nineteen Sixties: particularly, a Chevrolet Impala, a muscle automobile he discovered about from his father, a tire salesman. Ramanathan made it to the United States in his 20s, however he by no means purchased his gasoline guzzler, largely as a result of his scientific information of global warming rapidly eclipsed his earnings.
Fast-forward to the Nineteen Seventies and Ramanathan, now a newly minted postdoctoral fellow in planetary sciences, was spending his days working as a visiting researcher at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and his evenings on a facet venture he hid from his supervisors. His solitary nighttime analysis would find yourself altering how scientists considered international warming.
The younger scientist had found that chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, then extensively utilized in the manufacture of fridges, air-conditioning items and spray cans, had a vital greenhouse impact. Ramanathan had briefly encountered these industrial chemical compounds in his first job at a refrigeration firm. Like carbon dioxide, CFCs trapped warmth in the ambiance. In reality, Ramanathan’s calculations urged, they have been extra potent: One molecule of a CFC may have the identical warming impact as as much as 10,000 molecules of carbon dioxide. For three months, he repeated the calculations searching for another rationalization. He discovered none.
“I was just a postdoc immigrant from India. I didn’t know if I should tell NASA about this or not. I just sent the paper off,” Ramanathan recalled.
The journal Science revealed the findings, and his work made the entrance web page of The New York Times in 1975. The concept that CFCs may probably be such a highly effective force in international warming was additionally met with disbelief, not in the least from Ramanathan himself, who launched into the venture purely out of curiosity at a time when climate change was not a urgent concern.
Ultimately, Ramanathan established the now extensively accepted proven fact that greenhouse gases aside from CO2 are a main contributor to international warming, vitally vital information that underpinned the first successful climate mitigation policy.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Thursday awarded Ramanathan, a distinguished analysis professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, the prestigious Crafoord Prize, which for some winners has been a harbinger of a Nobel Prize.
“He has expanded our view of how humankind is affecting the atmosphere’s composition, the climate and air quality and how these three interact,” mentioned Ilona Riipinen, professor of atmospheric sciences at Stockholm University in Sweden and member of the committee that awarded the prize, which is price 8 million Swedish krona (round $900,000).
Ramanathan, who studied engineering in Bengaluru, India, earlier than transferring to the United States, mentioned his profession’s first breakthrough was a end result of a number of pleased “accidents” that allowed him to attach the dots between totally different fields of research.
After graduating with a bachelor’s diploma in engineering, he had spent an sad stint working at a fridge firm ensuring that the cooling agent — CFCs — didn’t leak. When he was 26, he moved to the United States and launched into a doctoral diploma at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in an engineering-related area.
Ramanathan, nonetheless, discovered his supervisor had unexpectedly switched focus, and his dissertation ended up detailing the greenhouse impact in the ambiance of Venus. Then, whereas working at NASA Langley, he encountered the work of scientists Mario Molina and Frank Rowland. Their research showed CFCs depleted ozone, a pure atmospheric gasoline that protects people from cancer-causing radiation. (The duo later received the Nobel Prize in 1995.) Not till the Nineteen Eighties did CFCs broadly turn out to be a matter of public concern.
Before his 1975 investigation, Ramanathan mentioned he wasn’t the least bit apprehensive about climate change. However, as he and others expanded the listing of hint gases, reminiscent of methane and nitrous oxide, that contributed to the greenhouse impact, Ramanathan grew to become deeply involved that international warming would manifest a lot sooner than prevailing considering at the time. A paper he coauthored in 1985 concluded that hint gases have been probably as vital as CO2 for long-term international warming.
“That made a big impact. The whole climate community sort of woke up and said, ‘Wait a minute. Global warming is going to come twice as fast as we thought. It’s not going to be your children’s problem. It’s your problem now,” mentioned Spencer Weart, a historian of science and creator of the e book “The Discovery of Global Warming.” He is a former director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics.
“It’s great for Ramanathan to get some of the attention he deserves,” he added.
Ramanathan and others argued that CFCs’ potential for international warming gave purpose to limit manufacturing. The 1987 Montreal Protocol did ultimately ban the use of CFCs, though largely as a result of of intensified scientific and public concern over their well being influence after the 1985 discovery of a gap in the ozone layer. Without that ban, the world may have seen further warming of as much as 1 diploma Celsius (1.8 diploma Fahrenheit), in line with a 2021 study in the journal Nature.
The greenhouse impact of CFCs and hint gases was solely half of the puzzle. In his lengthy profession, Ramanathan has deployed satellites, balloons, drones and ships to immediately research Earth’s ambiance, confirming with direct observations what climate fashions had solely urged.
His key findings embrace displaying for the first time that clouds have a cooling effect on the planet and understanding how water vapor can amplify the warming results of carbon dioxide. He additionally led a venture that noticed and measured a 3-kilometer (about 2-mile) thick cloud of air pollution that coated a lot of the Indian subcontinent. His work on atmospheric brown clouds revealed that air air pollution had masked some of the results of international warming, a sophisticated dynamic that scientists are nonetheless untangling at present.
Ramanathan grew to become a council member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 2012, advising three consecutive popes on climate change coverage, an expertise he mentioned made him think about not simply the science but additionally the moral implications of the climate crisis, which he emphasised will disproportionately have an effect on the poor.
“His quiet but effective way of communication has been key to involving both the research community and decision makers,” mentioned Örjan Gustafsson, a professor of biogeochemistry at Stockholm University and member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences who has labored with Ramanathan.
“With an eye for the most vulnerable on our planet and an ear for younger researchers, he has inspired an entire generation of climate scientists.”
Ramanathan, now 81, drives a Tesla Model Y (though a purple mannequin of a Chevy Impala adorns his mantelpiece) and has transformed his California dwelling to solar energy however gave up strolling and taking the bus to work as a result of, he mentioned, it took too lengthy.
He famous that he hardly ever counsels particular person motion to fight the climate crisis. Instead, Ramanathan encourages the younger individuals he encounters to “stand up and elect the right politicians” and unfold the phrase “using data-based, not junk, science.”
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