James E. Hansen life and biography

James E. Hansen (born March 29, 1941) heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He has held this position since 1981. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.

After graduate school, Hansen continued his work with radiative transfer models, attempting to understand the Venusian atmosphere. Later he applied and refined these models to understand the Earth's atmosphere, in particular, the effects that aerosols and trace gases have on Earth's climate. Hansen's development and use of global climate models has contributed to the further understanding of the Earth's climate.

As a high school student, James E. Hansen was inspired by reading Robert Jastrow's Red Giants and White Dwarfs, and took the subway across New York to Dr Jastrow's office, arriving unannounced to ask Jastrow's advice on pursuing a career in science. He studied under James Van Allen, becoming one of the world's leading expert on global climate change and mankind's impact on weather phenomena, and eventually succeeded Jastrow as Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Hansen was among the first prominent scientists to speak out about the dangers of global climate change. He has said that unless the United States and other advanced nations take the lead, the effects of climate change will render the earth "a different planet". As NASA's top climatologist, his research has shown how trace gases and aerosols in the earth's atmosphere prevent the escape of infrared energy, thus causing the planet to effectively simmer and warm. Using global thermometric records to document the resulting changes in Earth's surface temperature, he has quantified both the natural greenhouse effect and the additional effect of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other man-made pollutants, and concluded that the human impact on climate has now surpassed natural effects.

In 2006, Hansen made headlines when he complained that the Bush administration had attempted to "muzzle" climate scientists at NASA, limiting their access to reporters, and that he had been ordered to remove web postings that contradicted the administration's positions on scientific matters.

Hansen is best known for his research in the field of climatology, his testimony on climate change to congressional committees in 1988 that helped raise broad awareness of global warming, and his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change. In recent years, Hansen has become an activist for action to mitigate the effects of climate change, which on a few occasions has led to his arrest.

Hansen has also contributed toward the understanding of black carbon on regional climate. In recent decades, northern China has experienced increased drought, and southern China has received increased summer rain resulting in a larger number of floods. Southern China has had a decrease in temperatures while most of the world has warmed. In a paper with Menon and colleagues, through the use of observations and climate models results, they conclude that the black carbon heats the air, increases convection and precipitation, and leads to larger surface cooling than if the aerosols were sulfates.

Hansen was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1996 for his "development of pioneering radiative transfer models and studies of planetary atmospheres; development of simplified and three-dimensional global climate models; explication of climate forcing mechanisms; analysis of current climate trends from observational data; and projections of anthropogenic impacts on the global climate system."

In 2001, he received the 7th Annual Heinz Award in the Environment (endowed with US$250,000) for his research on global warming, and was listed as one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2006. Also in 2006, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) selected James Hansen to receive their Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility "for his courageous and steadfast advocacy in support of scientists' responsibilities to communicate their scientific opinions and findings openly and honestly on matters of public importance."

In 2007, Hansen shared the US $1 million Dan David Prize for "achievements having an outstanding scientific, technological, cultural or social impact on our world". In 2008, he received the PNC Bank Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service for his "outstanding achievements" in science. At the end of 2008, Hansen was named by EarthSky Communications and a panel of 600 scientist-advisors as the Scientist Communicator of the Year, citing him as an "outspoken authority on climate change" who had "best communicated with the public about vital science issues or concepts during 2008."

In 2009, Hansen was awarded the 2009 Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the American Meteorological Society, for his "outstanding contributions to climate modeling, understanding climate change forcings and sensitivity, and for clear communication of climate science in the public arena."

Hansen won the 2010 Sophie Prize, set up in 1997 by Norwegian Jostein Gaarder, the author of the 1991 best-selling novel and teenagers' guide to philosophy "Sophie's World", for his " key role for the development of our understanding of human-induced climate change."

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