Climatologist Ronald Stouffer honored with Penn State Alumni Fellow Award

Ronald J. Stouffer (’76, '77g, Earth and Mineral Sciences) senior research climatologist and head of the Climate and Ecosystems Group at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was honored with the lifelong title of Penn State Alumni Fellow.

Ron Stouffer is recognized for his outstanding and crucial contributions to the understanding and communication of the behavior of the climate system.

Stouffer has received international recognition for his key role as a developer of some of the most sophisticated and highly regarded climate models in the world.  Stouffer and his colleagues at GFDL have quantified the role that increases carbon dioxide levels have had and will continue to have on the Earth’s climate.    Stouffer has also excelled at synthesizing advances in climate science and making them accessible to the broader community of scientists and policy makers through his service with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.  He has been a key contributor on all four IPCC reports, which are commonly regarded as the gold standard of climate assessments.

Stouffer has authored over 100 research papers (cited over 8,000 times) and is recognized as an international leader in his field.  Stouffer excels in his service to his field as an editor for the journal Climate Dynamics.  He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, incoming Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and Chair of the World Climate Research Program Coupled Model Intercomparison Panel.

Ron and his wife, Patricia, currently reside in Trenton, NJ, and he is a member of the Penn State Alumni Association.

The Alumni Fellow Award is the most prestigious award given by the Penn State Alumni Association.  Since 1973, the Alumni Fellow Award has been given to select alumni who, as leaders in their professional fields, are nominated by an academic college and accept an invitation from the President of the University to return to campus to share their expertise with students, faculty, and administrators.