Ronald J. Stouffer Biography

Senior Research Meteorologist - Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory

Ronald J. Stouffer is a senior research climatologist and group head of the Climate and Ecosystems Group at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), Princeton, NJ, a federal research laboratory within the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Stouffer is one of the leading climate modelers in the world, and uses complex numerical models to study and predict the behavior of the earth's climate system. Because of his scientific contributions to climate research over the past two decades, he has been a central contributor to the first four Working Group 1 assessment reports from the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and has been a chapter author for the 1995, 2001 and 2007 reports.

Stouffer first came to GFDL in 1977 from the Pennsylvania State University where he received both Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Meteorology. During his tenure at GFDL, he has worked closely with Syukuro Manabe, who was the first scientist to develop a numerical model that joined the atmosphere and ocean into a single coupled model to represent the earth's climate system. Since his arrival at GFDL, Stouffer has published a number of ground-breaking papers and has authored over 100 papers on global climate change.

In addition to his responsibilities as IPCC chapter author, Stouffer is a member and chair of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) Coupled Model Intercomparison Panel (CMIP), an editor of the journal, Climate Dynamics, and has received a number of awards, including the WMO Norbert Gerbier-Mumm International Award (1999), the NOAA Administrator's Award (1996, 2008), the Department of Commerce Gold (2002), Silver (2005) and Bronze (2007) medals and five NOAA Distinguished Authorship Awards. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and fellow of the American Meteorological Society.