Lindzen, Richard (1940-)

RICHARD SIEGMUND LINDZEN is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he has taught since 1983. Though extremely accomplished and respected in his field, he is perhaps best-known in non-academic circles for his arguments against anthropogenic climate change, that is, human-influenced or induced climate change known as global warming. Lindzen was born in Webster, Massachusetts, on February 8,1940, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Physics and Applied Mathematics in 1964 after earning an AB in 1960 and an SM in 1961 from Harvard. He taught at the University of Chicago (1967–72) and Harvard (1972–83) before moving to MIT.

Lindzen is a dynamic meteorologist and clima-tologist, applying mathematics, computational modeling, and hydrodynamics to the study of atmospheric motions. His research interests and contributions involve Hadley Circulation, planetary waves, upper atmospheric dynamics, meso-scale systems, clear air turbulence, ozone photochemistry, radiative transfer, climate sensitivity, atmospheric eddies, global heat transport, cumulus convections and the greenhouse effect, tropical meteorology, monsoons, and the heating and drying of the atmosphere. His Earth climate models are used to study the atmospheric sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2), ice cap stability, regional climate maintenance, and glaciation.

He was honored with the American Meteorological Society's Meisinger and Charney Awards, as well as the American Geophysical Unions Macelwane Medal. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Science and Economic Advisory Council of the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy, the National Academy of Science Committee on Human Rights, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and served on the 11-member Committee on the Science of Climate Change of the National Research Council.

He consults for the National Aeronautical and Space Administration's Global Modeling and Simulation Group, and has been a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

A hole in the ozone layer of the atmosphere was discovered in 1985, and the earlier detection of the warming of the Earth (1980) gave impetus to the idea that one of the causes is human-induced climate change from manmade ozone-depleting gases. In 1988, the United Nations responded by creating [Page 603]and tasking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with studying the hypothesized phenomenon. The IPCC determined that the Earth had warmed over the prior 150-year period, and that this warming was due, in part, to human activity. The executive summary of the report concluded that the most of the observed global warming experienced in the last 50 years is due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. The IPCC and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace on October 12, 2007, for their work on global warming.