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Immigrants Of The Week: Karan Kler, and Ram Ramanathanby Greg SiskindIMMIGRANT OF THE DAY: KARAN KLER - IMMIGRANT ADVOCATE
IMMIGRANT OF THE DAY: RAM RAMANATHAN - CLIMATE SCIENTIST
UCSD describes Ramanathan: One of the world's leading atmospheric scientists, Ramanathan was the
first to show that ozone-depleting aerosols could aggravate the
greenhouse effect. In 1980, he correctly predicted that global warming
from carbon dioxide would be detectable by the year 2000.
More recently, Ramanathan showed that South Asian "brown clouds" caused by the burning of fossil fuels could lower ocean temperatures, slowing down monsoon circulation and reducing seasonal rainfall. In a pioneering study with agricultural economists, he linked the phenomenon to a significant decrease in the Indian rice harvest. He has also linked the combined heating effect of greenhouse gases and brown clouds, which contain soot, trace metals and other particles, to the recent retreat of Himalayan glaciers that supply drinking water to billions of people. Ramanathan also showed that black carbon particles in brown clouds absorb far more solar radiation than previously thought, contributing to the warming of the upper atmosphere. "I currently consider Dr. Ramanathan to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, climate researcher," wrote Paul Crutzen, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and a former Scripps researcher, in support of Ramanathan's nomination.
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