Dr. Elizabeth Barnes is an exceptionallygifted atmospheric dynamicist who is innovating the application of emerging tools in data science to uncover new insights into the physics of the climate system. In the short time since her Ph.D., Dr. Barnes has already made fundamental contributions in many areas, including dynamical understanding of the extratropical atmospheric circulation, its variability and its response to anthropogenic and natural forcings; leveraging advanced methods in artificial intelligence to improve global subseasonal weather prediction originating from tropical disturbances; and pioneering the usage of such methods to identify causal physical linkages underlying observed climate variability and to reveal the emerging influence of anthropogenic climate change. 

Dr. Barnes is a prolific scholar and collaborator, with approximately 100 publications to date. Her papers are exemplary not only for their influential scientific content but also for their clarity of purpose and prose. Dr. Barnes has established herself as a dedicated and outstanding mentor and educator in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, where she leads a vigorous and well-funded research group. In addition to her teaching duties, Dr. Barnes provides impactful leadership to the national and international climate and data science communities. Dr. Barnes’ scholarly achievements and promise have been recognized with many prestigious awards, including the AGU James R. Holton Junior Scientist Award, the AGU Turco Lectureship, the American Meteorological Society’s Meisinger Award, a NOAA Climate and Global Change postdoctoral fellowship and a National Science Foundation CAREER award. 

Thank you, Libby, for boldly innovating crosscutting connections between climate and data science in service of advancing physical understanding; your vision and commitment are a legacy in the making.

— Clara Deser 

National Center for Atmospheric Research 

Boulder, Colorado 

— Lorenzo Polvani 

Columbia University 

New York, New York 

— Michael Pritchard 

University of California, Irvine 

Irvine, California 

— David Thompson 

Colorado State University 

Fort Collins, Colorado

This award means many things to me. At the highest level, although this award is given to my name, to me this award emphasizes all of the wonderful people I have gotten to work with over the past few years. Without you all there would be no universe in which I would be up for such an award. This is especially true of the students, postdocs and researchers I get to work with on a daily basis here at Colorado State University and beyond. Thank you. Second, my ultimate science goal has always been to try and change how people think, rather than a goal of an explicit number or solution. This award suggests we may be succeeding in doing just that. And finally, this award means that the community sees value in the work that we are doing and wishes to see it continue. This is a very good thing because I am having far too much fun!  — Elizabeth A. Barnes  Colorado State University Fort Collins, Colorado 

Lecture Title Explainable AI for the Geosciences

Elizabeth A. Barnes and Timothy M. Merlis received 2014 James R. Holton Junior Scientist Awards at the 2014 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, held 15–19 December in San Francisco, Calif. The award recognizes "outstanding research contributions by a junior atmospheric scientist within three years of his or her Ph.D."  

The Atmospheric Sciences section of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) awards the 2014 James R. Holton Junior Scientist Award to Elizabeth A. Barnes. Dr. Barnes is an assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University. She has already made major contributions to our understanding of midlatitude atmospheric circulation. Although receiving her Ph.D. only 2 years ago, at the time of her nomination she had published 23 papers in high-quality journals and was the lead author on 18 of them.

Elizabeth “Libby” Barnes’s accomplishments can best be described by quoting from her nomination letters. “I cannot think of a more deserving candidate among her peers. She is an extraordinarily good scientist. … The amazing fact is this: the quality of her scientific work matches the quantity.” “Bottom line: Libby Barnes is spectacularly good. I have no doubt she will become a major force in atmospheric and climate science in the next decade. … She is destined for greatness.”

“The diversity of Dr. Barnes’ research interests and skills is impressive, particularly for someone so early in their career. She is equally adept at working with observations and numerical models. She has used both a barotropic model and the dynamical core of a GCM to great effect in her research, and has considerable expertise in the analysis and diagnosis of observations. She is widely sought for and gives very clear presentations. Her physical arguments are lucid and her papers are clearly written. Dr. Barnes is a ‘star’ junior scientist by any measure. She is highly productive, very well known, and has already made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the climate system.”

For these reasons, the AGU Atmospheric Sciences section is proud to award the 2014 Holton Award to Elizabeth A. Barnes.

—Alan Robock, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.

I wish to begin by simply saying thank you. It is an honor to receive this award, but even more so, a humbling experience. I must admit I was surprised to have even been nominated, let alone to have received this award. I suppose that is why one does not nominate oneself! While there are many people who have helped me along the way, I wish to explicitly express my gratitude to a few key people who supported and guided my enthusiasm for science over the past decade or so: Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, for giving me the opportunity to explore a whole new world of questions; Julia Slingo, for providing me with my very first look at atmospheric science; Dennis Hartmann, for many things, but especially for consistently setting the bar one rung higher than was comfortable while continuing to nurture my scientific development; Lorenzo Polvani, for showing me how to ask interesting questions; and Arlene Fiore, for putting up with me, a dynamicist, while I tried to learn a little bit of chemistry. Although I received my Ph.D. from the University of Washington, where Jim Holton was a professor for 38 years, I never had the honor of meeting him. I am told he was a wonderful mentor and teacher, and it is, of course, evident that he was also an outstanding scientist. It goes without saying that it is an incredible honor to receive this award bearing his name. —Elizabeth Barnes, Colorado State University, Fort Collins