Vaishali Naik,
along with her fellow coordinating lead author (CLA) Sophie
Szopa, provided the necessary
leadership to deliver the 2021 IPCC chapter on short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs),
which established the basis for comanagement of climate change and air quality.
Vaishali Naik has an extensive research
career with major publications in modeling and analysis
of atmospheric composition and chemistry. She
has led, along with her Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) cohorts,
innovative model studies addressing how short-lived pollutant emissions drive
climate change, including how the COVID-19-related reduction in pollutants
changed climate forcing over East Asia. She
has participated in and led multiauthor assessments of tropospheric chemistry.
For these reasons, she was selected as a lead author for the 2021 IPCC Sixth Assessment
Report’s (AR6) chemistry chapter. The
chemistry-climate chapter in IPCC reports is always a difficult one because it
sits on the periphery of the core assessment of physical climate. The coupling of climate change and air
quality—a natural one—has often been discouraged by the governments in the scoping
of the chapters, or by other
climate scientists. This has been the
case since the IPCC Second Assessment Report (1995). In AR6, her chapter 6 on SLCFs was becoming difficult to draft when
suddenly, late in the cycle of drafts, the two CLAs stepped down, leaving a
vacuum. The IPCC leadership then promoted
(tasked is a better word) Vaishali Naik and Sophie Szopa to be the CLAs with
responsibility of delivering the
chapter and getting it through the governments’ review. This leadership role occurred after the third lead author
meeting, and then COVID hit, relegating the fourth lead author meeting to Zoom. So the AR6 was delivered without any
further in-person meetings, which are usually essential to fine-tuning the
chapters and reaching consensus among the authors.
Vaishali Naik
showed breadth and acumen in sorting through the published literature, in
directing and incentivizing the lead author team, and in assembling a chapter that was able in the end to deliver a clear scientific
assessment of short-lived climate forcers, to wit: Future air pollution changes are more likely driven by
changes in emissions than in climate; and control of SLCFs may be
critical for near-term climate goals. From
my direct experience, Vaishali is an excellent colleague and leader.
—Michael J. Prather, University of California, Irvine
It is truly an honor to receive the 2023 Piers J. Sellers Global
Environmental Change Mid-Career Award and share it with my co-CLA Sophie Szopa.
I am privileged to be receiving an award honoring Piers Sellers’s inspiring
multidisciplinary work and visionary
leadership on global environmental issues. I am very grateful to Michael for
nominating me and the Global Environmental Change awards committee for this
honor.
My contribution to the delivery of “best available science” in
the 2021 IPCC chapter on short-lived climate forcers
(SLCFs) is built on scientific knowledge, research skills,
and confidence that I have acquired because of the incredible support of
my wonderful mentors and mentees, colleagues, and collaborators throughout my
career. I am extremely grateful to my Ph.D. adviser, Don Wuebbles, for
introducing me to the essential role of atmospheric chemistry in the climate
system and global modeling, instilling in me big-picture thinking, and for
allowing me to carve my own research path. I am grateful to Denise Mauzerall
and Michael Oppenheimer, my postdoc mentors,
for furthering my understanding of the policy relevance of chemistry-climate interactions.
I am fortunate
to be working alongside my talented and creative Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) colleagues, and I thank them for their
collaboration, generosity, and support. My deepest thanks to Larry Horowitz, my
chemistry-climate modeling “guru,” whose guidance and support have been
invaluable for my professional growth. I very much appreciate John Dunne, my division
leader, and V. Ramaswamy, our laboratory director, for their encouragement,
mentorship, and leadership. I would also like to thank
the postdocs and students
who have worked with me for
helping strengthen my knowledge and enhance my leadership skills.
I am very grateful to Arlene Fiore, Jean-François Lamarque, and
Ron Stouffer for catalyzing my coordination of multimodel intercomparison projects that inform IPCC
reports and opening doors to long-term collaborations that I have benefited
from immensely.
My sincere thanks to the
full chapter 6 author team including review editors for their important
contributions and the Working Group I report authors, leadership, and the technical support
unit for their support in delivering the scientific assessment of SLCFs in AR6. Special thanks to Sophie for her astute
leadership and camaraderie making it so
much easier to survive the constant state of panic in 2021!
Finally, thank you to my husband,
Rohit, and our daughter, Keya, for their endless love, support, and patience.
—Vaishali Naik, NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
Laboratory, Princeton, N.J.