July 29, 2015

Two UW researchers elected AGU fellows

Two University of Washington scientists have been elected as new fellows of the American Geophysical Union. The Earth sciences group recognizes only one in 1,000 members each year for major scientific work and sustained impact. The UW honorees are among 60 new 2015 fellows from U.S. and international institutions. They will both be honored in December at the union’s annual meeting in San Francisco.

Christopher Bretherton, a UW professor jointly appointed in the departments of Atmospheric Sciences and Applied Mathematics, was recognized for his research on clouds. Bretherton earned his undergraduate degree from the California Institute of Technology and his doctorate in 1984 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He did postdoctoral work at the National Center for Atmospheric Research before joining the UW faculty in 1985.

Bretherton studies how clouds form and change over time and how to better represent this in global climate and weather-forecasting models. His research also looks at the role that clouds may play in climate change. He was a lead author of the chapter on clouds and aerosols for the 2013 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and he is a former director of the UW Program on Climate Change. Bretherton was lead author of a 2012 National Research Council report, “A National Strategy for Advancing Climate Modeling,” and is a recipient of the Jule G. Charney Award, a career research award from the American Meteorological Society.

Ian Joughin, a polar scientist with the UW Applied Physics Laboratory, is recognized for his work studying glaciers. He earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Vermont and his doctorate in 1995 from the UW. He was a postdoctoral researcher and then a staff scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena before joining the UW in 2004. Joughin is also an affiliate professor in Earth and space sciences.

Joughin’s work is in measuring the speed and changing shape of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. His methods span satellite and airborne data, fieldwork and computer modeling to solve ice dynamics problems. Recent studies showed some of the fastest recorded glacier speeds in Greenland and evidence that the huge West Antarctic Ice Sheet has begun its collapse into the sea. Joughin was previously awarded an Exceptional Achievement Medal from NASA and the Louis Agassiz Medal for cryosphere research from the European Geophysical Union.