Jean M. Bahr, Robert A. Duce, and Richard C. J. Somerville were awarded the 2017 Ambassador Award at the AGU Fall Meeting Honors Ceremony, held on 13 December 2017 in New Orleans, La. The award is in recognition for “outstanding contributions to one or more of the following areas: societal impact, service to the Earth and space community, scientific leadership, and promotion of talent/career pool.”  

Richard C. J. Somerville has always been a clear and effective communicator of climate science, as recently acknowledged by the AGU community in naming Richard winner of the 2015 AGU Climate Communication Prize. Richard’s audience has been the general public at large, world leaders and policy makers, students, and fellow scientists. Successfully addressing and accurately informing an audience this diverse on topics as complex as global warming and global climate change truly require the communication skills of a seasoned and knowledgeable ambassador.

Richard has been an inspirational educator. Beginning in 1973 at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York and later at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, he mentored dozens of currently active climate scientists. For his accomplishments in promoting excellence in education, Richard was honored by the San Diego Science Educators Association as an outstanding university science teacher.

He served as a coordinating lead author of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report for which IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. His elegant book The Forgiving Air was an easily understandable account of the science behind global warming, winning in the process the Louis J. Battan Author’s Award of the American Meteorological Society. In his 2011 Physics Today paper “Communicating the Science of Climate Change,” Richard explained the climate change problem in exceptionally clear and concise terms to both physicists and the general public.

With a solid foundation in climate science and a research specialty in atmospheric dynamics, Richard’s first permanent position was at GISS, where he led the effort to construct the first global general circulation model of the atmosphere specifically aimed at providing -long--range seasonal weather forecasts. His effective leadership was the key ingredient to successfully retrofitting an early University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), weather model into the general circulation model (GCM) that became the predecessor of the GISS Model II climate GCM.

At Scripps, Richard began to direct his attention more fully toward public service by promoting the core objectives of our leading science organizations, government agencies, nongovernmental institutes, and worldwide -policy--making bodies. He served selflessly on advisory committees for nongovernmental organizations and for government agencies such as NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Research Council. He was instrumental in helping to establish the Aspen Global Change Institute (AGCI) and has been serving on the AGCI Advisory Board since 1990. He was also chair of the Board of Trustees of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR).

—Andrew Lacis and Michael Mishchenko, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York

My field is climate science, and we scientists all know that the world faces serious challenges in this area. Meeting these challenges requires taking science into account. We must not only continue to do research that enables us to understand and predict climate change, but we must act energetically to help the world make use of the science that we create. Albert Einstein said it best in an address to students at the California Institute of Technology in 1931: “Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors…in order that the creations of our mind shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.” The AGU Ambassador Award recognizes contributions in four areas: societal impact, service to the Earth and space community, scientific leadership, and promotion of talent/career pool. All four are critical in making our science “a blessing and not a curse to mankind.” My work in these areas has always involved collaborations. Consider the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Writing the IPCC assessment reports is a team effort, and a selfless one, in which we scientists take time away from our own research to provide governments and the public with scientific information that is relevant to policy making but not prescriptive of policy. Persuading governments, especially the U.S. federal government, to accept the science is an unfinished task. On a personal note, my Ph.D. dates from 1966. During my student years, I encountered almost no women students in meteorology or climatology, and there were very few prominent women scientists in the field. That has changed dramatically, and I have been fortunate to work with numerous outstanding women scientists during the last half century. Many of my graduate student advisees and postdoctoral fellows have been women. Among my female collaborators in the work for which the Ambassador Award is given, I must mention especially Catherine Gautier, Susan Joy Hassol, Cherilynn Morrow, Lynn Russell, and the late Sally Ride. I thank Andy Lacis and Michael Mishchenko for nominating me for the Ambassador Award. I thank all the students, postdocs, and colleagues who have worked with me. I thank AGU for establishing the Ambassador Award and for honoring me with it. Finally, I thank Sylvia Bal, my wife of more than 50 years, for supporting me with constant love and exceptional tolerance. —Richard C. J. Somerville, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla

Richard Somerville was awarded the 2017 Ambassador Award and a Conferred Fellow at the AGU Fall Meeting Honors Ceremony, held on 13 December 2017 in  New Orleans, LA. The award is in recognition for “outstanding contributions to one or more of the following area(s): societal impact, service to the Earth and space community, scientific leadership, and promotion of talent/career pool.

Richard C.J. Somerville was awarded the 2015 Climate Communication Prize at the AGU Fall Meeting Honors Ceremony, held on 16 December 2015 in San Francisco, Calif. The Climate Communication Prize is funded by Nature’s Own, a purveyor of fossils, minerals, and handcrafted jewelry in Boulder, Colo. The prize honors an “AGU member–scientist for the communication of climate science, and highlights the importance of promoting scientific literacy, clarity of message, and efforts to foster respected and understanding of science–based values as they relate to the implications of climate change.”  

Richard Somerville has made monumental contributions to the collective effort to communicate climate change to the public. These efforts include contributions to AGU’s own communication and outreach mission. At the AGU Fall Meeting 3 years ago in San Francisco, Richard, working with Susan Joy Hassol and the newly formed Climate Science Rapid Response Team, jointly conducted a series of workshops for climate scientists, providing critical training to these scientists, including the next generation of climate science communicators.

Richard coauthored with Susan Joy Hassol an influential article “Communicating the Science of Climate Change” in Physics Today. In this article, he presented a number of key science communication concepts to the community. For example, the article showed how emissions would have to be ramped down rapidly as the timing of peak emissions is increasingly delayed. The diagram communicates the urgency of climate change mitigation in a compelling manner.

Richard has also played a critical role in organizing the scientific community to more effectively combat the misinformation and disinformation that is sadly so omnipresent in today’s media coverage of climate change. He played an influential role, for example, in drafting a letter from 38 climate scientists to counter a particularly misleading op–ed published in the Wall Street Journal. The letter of response began with Richard’s very effective rhetorical question: “Do you consult your dentist about your heart condition?”

One of the tougher things for climate scientists to talk about effectively is the relationship between climate change and extreme weather. Too often, scientists, as Richard has noted, lead with what is not known, rather than what is known—a fatal communication blunder. Richard has been out front in talking about the conundrum, coaching a whole generation of climate scientists in how to communicate the actual connections in ways that are effective and accurate.

Richard continues to do all of these things even as he has, along with other University of California, San Diego (UCSD) faculty, developed and begun to teach a new massive open online course (MOOC) on climate change. Entitled “Change in Four Dimensions,” the course covers the physical, sociological, technological, and humanistic aspects of climate change.

Richard is currently the primary scientific adviser for Susan Joy Hassol’s Climate Communication group while also serving as distinguished professor emeritus and research professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography/UCSD.

—Michael E. Mann, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; and Jeffrey T. Kiehl, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo.

With great humility, I profoundly thank AGU for awarding me its Climate Communication Prize. I thank Jeff Kiehl and Mike Mann for nominating me, and I thank Nature’s Own for the cash award that accompanies this great honor. All the previous winners of this prize, Gavin Schmidt, Jeff Kiehl, Kevin Trenberth, and Katharine Hayhoe are my friends and colleagues. I have learned much from them about communicating the science of climate change. I also gratefully acknowledge the late Steve Schneider, who taught all of us. I agree with Steve’s wise advice to everyone who communicates science: Know thy audience; know thyself; know thy stuff. I have also learned much from scientists who have mastered the art of communicating science with the broad public through television, notably Neil deGrasse Tyson and the late Carl Sagan. Many fine scientists have excelled at speaking and writing for the general public, including John Tyndall, who put the greenhouse effect on a firm physical foundation in 1861. Elizabeth Kolbert is a superb science writer who writes often and powerfully about climate change. All these people have inspired me. I must single out the immense benefit I have had from working on climate communication for more than 25 years with Susan Joy Hassol. Our partnership is unusual. Susan is a professional communicator, not a scientist, but she has acquired a deep understanding of climate science, and she has an uncanny ability to explain complex scientific topics in clear, compelling English. The website -climatecommunication.org showcases many products of our collaboration and is a one–stop shop for anybody who wants to do better at communicating climate science. There are many obstacles to communicating climate science clearly. Communicating well is like skiing well. Nobody is born an expert skier, but it can be learned, and a good way of learning is taking lessons from experts. We know that excellent science can inform wise policy and that communicating the science effectively can help the world cope intelligently with the challenge of climate change. I hope that many more climate scientists will make the effort to improve their ability to communicate science with the wider world. I thank Sylvia Bal, my wife of 50 years, for her unwavering support. I thank the many colleagues who have worked with me. I thank AGU and Nature’s Own for establishing this prize in climate communication and for honoring me with it. —Richard C. J. Somerville, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla