IPCC panel wins Nobel Peace Prize

At least nine Princeton faculty members were associated with the group of scientists that won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for its work on climate change.

The group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was created in 1988 to provide objective policy advice about climate change as more people became concerned about the issue. It includes more than 2,000 scientists and officials from more than 100 countries. Earlier this year, two IPCC reports said it was very likely that humans were responsible for climate change and that global warming will continue if it is not addressed.

The prize was shared by the IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change," the Nobel Foundation said in a statement.

The nine identified Princeton faculty were geosciences professors Leo Donner, Isaac Held, Gabriel Lau, Venkatachalam Ramaswamy and Jorge Sarmiento; geosciences lecturer Anand Gnanadesikan; Wilson School professors Denise Mauzerall and Michael Oppenheimer; and mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Robert Socolow. Other Princeton scholars may have contributed indirectly through their research on the topic.

Donner, Gnanadesikan, Held, Lau and Ramaswamy also work at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, located in Princeton.

Oppenheimer, the lead author of a report the panel presented to the United Nations this spring, said he hopes the prize will catalyze reforms to slow climate change. "[It] is a measure of how much the issue has penetrated the public. Governments would be wise to take advantage of the fact that the public is listening."

Ramaswamy said he was on his way back to Princeton from Boulder, Colo., when he found out that the IPCC had won the Nobel. "I had to get up early so I looked [at] Yahoo," he said. "There had been leaks that the IPCC had been nominated, so I checked out of curiosity and there it was." He added that he felt "great" to learn that he had been involved on a project that won the award.

Gnanadesikan also said he was glad the IPCC's work had been singled out. "I was very pleased that the IPCC was recognized," he said. "I think it was particularly gratifying at Princeton because the climate models used to predict climate change were developed at Princeton."

Though Held agreed the prize was a great honor, he said he didn't feel comfortable being singled out for recognition. "I think it's a misperception that individual scientists have won the prize — there are so many of us," he said. "It's just the organization that won." His contributions to the IPCC reports released over the last two decades, he said, have been "infinitesimal."

Donner said he thought the IPCC's evolution as a collective body was more important than its individual members' contributions. "The process has made a difference," he said.

Socolow said he viewed the prize as a vindication of science as a tool for bettering the world. "It is a recognition of science for the benefit of society," he said.

Lau echoed Socolow's hope that the prize will highlight the issues the IPCC is striving to address with its research. "This recognition will really bring global warming to the forefront scientifically and politically," he said. "I hope people will pay more attention to global warming."