Prof. Zhengyu Liu is an intellectual leader at the intersection of climate dynamics, Earth system modeling, and paleoclimate reconstruction who has developed a deep understanding of Earth system interactions and global climate and environmental change. Liu’s work is underpinned by his strong modeling acumen and rich knowledge of the mechanics of the atmosphere and oceans, and their interactions that bear on questions that challenge other disciplines. One example is the Holocene temperature conundrum. Here, most proxy data suggest warmer global temperatures during the early to mid-Holocene and cooler temperatures in the late Holocene, culminating in the Little Ice Age and subsequent anthropogenic warming. Climate models suggest an opposing scenario. Liu is deeply involved in efforts to resolve this important issue, as both cannot be correct. He also applies his modeling expertise to better understand such complex processes as the decadal climate variability, El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), monsoons, and Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and thereby unravel the dynamical interactions among different regions of Earth’s climate system and examine climate variability over a broad spectrum of timescales ranging from glacial/interglacial to decadal and interannual. His work on the AMOC, one of the most active components of our climate system with the potential to initiate abrupt climate changes over the globe, has profound implications for our projections of future climate change.
Bert Bolin, the Swedish meteorologist for whom this award is named,
spent time at Princeton working with Jule Charney, John von Neumann, and
others on the first computerized weather forecast. However, his most
impactful contributions led to the formation of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by bringing together numerous scientists
with diverse backgrounds. Much like Bolin, Liu collaborates with many of
the world’s best climate modelers, climatologists, oceanographers, and
paleoclimatologists and crosses disciplinary lines easily and
productively. He has been a leader in the application of climate models
with isotopes to understand the formation mechanism of oxygen isotopic
composition of precipitation preserved in speleothems and, more
recently, in ice cores. His leadership in the development and
application of the isotope-enabled Earth system model to past climate
changes has and will continue to improve our fundamental understanding
of the climatic interpretation of stable water isotopes globally. The
impact of Prof. Zhengyu Liu’s extensive body of work on the scholarship
and productivity of his colleagues in both the modeling and paleoclimate
communities has been extensive and transformative.
—Ellen Mosley-Thompson, Ohio State University, Columbu
