Every year the American Meteorological Society (AMS) presents awards to members of the weather, water, and climate community during its annual meeting. Several researchers with ties to the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility were honored during the January 2019 meeting in Phoenix, Arizona.

Samson Hagos, an atmospheric scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, received the Clarence Leroy Meisinger Award for early career researchers. The award recognized Hagos “for novel use of observations, theory, and modeling to advance understanding of tropical convection and its interactions with the large-scale circulation.” Hagos is the principal investigator for an upcoming ARM field campaign in Indonesia, Diurnal Cycle Interactions with Madden-Julian Oscillation Propagation (DIMOP).

Patrick Minnis, a consulting scientist with Science Systems and Applications Inc. in Hampton, Virginia, received the Verner E. Suomi Technology Medal “for numerous, innovative advances in remote sensing techniques to understand clouds and radiative processes.” A value-added product from Minnis’ group at NASA Langley Research Center provides satellite-based cloud and radiation data covering several ARM sites. In 1998, Minnis received the Henry G. Houghton Award, another AMS honor, “for making outstanding contributions to understanding the effects of clouds and aerosols on the Earth’s radiation budget.” He became an AMS Fellow in 2010.

J. David Neelin, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, received the Jule G. Charney Medal. The award cited Neelin’s “fundamental contributions to understanding tropical climate dynamics and the impact of anthropogenic forcing on precipitation, drying, circulation, and extremes.” Neelin’s publications include papers using ARM data from the Tropical Western Pacific atmospheric observatory and the Green Ocean Amazon (GoAmazon2014/15) field campaign. He received the Clarence Leroy Meisinger Award in 1996 and was a 2003 AMS Fellow.

For a full list of 2019 award recipients, go to the American Meteorological Society web page.