The Scientific and Technological Activities Commission (STAC) gives awards to recognize individuals whose outstanding contributions further the goals of the STAC. Each year, the Committee on Climate Variability and Change (CCVC) may nominate an individual to receive one of three STAC awards: Outstanding Early Career, Distinguished Scientific/Technological Achievement, and Outstanding Service.
Learn More About AMS STAC Awards & Honors.
Learn More About Award Nominations.
The Committee on Climate Variability and Change is pleased to award Dr. Stephen Yeager the 2024 Distinguished Scientific/Technological Achievement Award for his scientific and community leadership on understanding the role of North Atlantic climate variability and advancing multi-year to decadal prediction especially through leading the development of large community datasets with the Community Earth System Model.
Dr. Stephen Yeager is currently a Project Scientist at the National Centers for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), where he has worked in the Oceanography section of the Climate and Global Dynamics (CGD) Laboratory since 1998, leading efforts to produce seasonal to multi-decadal forecasts of the Earth's climate systems and study the influence of the ocean using the NCAR maintained Community Earth System Model (CESM).
During his time at NCAR, Dr. Yeager has authored over 100 peer reviewed articles and attracted over 10,000 citations. In addition, he has been a member of the Executive Committee of the CLIVAR US AMOC Science Team and the International CLIVAR Ocean Model Development Panel and lead the CGD Earth System Prediction group, the CESM Earth System Prediction Working Group, and the World Climate Research Program's (WCRP) Decadal Climate Prediction Project.
The Committee on Climate Variability and Change is pleased to posthumously award Dr. Lisa Goddard the 2023 Outstanding Service Award in recognition of her pioneering translation of climate forecasts to decision-makers across the world and transforming the concept of climate services.
The award was conferred during a ceremony held at the memorial symposium for Lisa at the 2023 AMS Annual Meeting, Tuesday January 10th 8:30 - 10am. David Cooperburg, Lisa's husband will receive the certificate in her honor.
Dr. Lisa Goddard was a Senior Research Scientist and Director of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) at Columbia University. Dr. Goddard began as a Research Scientist at the IRI in 2003, taking her position as Director in 2012 and being promoted to Senior Research Scientist in 2013. She also held the position of Adjunct Associate Professor with the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. In addition to her positions at Columbia, Dr. Goddard served on the International CLIVAR Scientific Steering Group in beginning 2006, advancing to Co-Chair in 2013, served on the National Academy of Science's Board of Atmospheric Science and Climate beginning in 2009, the Climate Observing System Council beginning in 2003, and Chaired the Oversight Committee for Postdocs Applying Climate Expertise Fellowship Program (PACE) a program that she founded in 2007 to link recent climate Ph.D.s with decision making institutions.
Dr. Goddard's research addressed near-term climate change, focusing on providing climate information at the 10-20 year horizon. This research incorporated understanding how seasonal-to-interannual and low frequency climate variability interacts with climate change when assessing probabilistic risks and attempting to diagnose and extract meaningful information from climate models and observations.
The Committee on Climate Variability and Change awarded Dr. Angeline Pendergrass the 2022 Outstanding Early Career Award for her fundamental contributions to our understanding of the dynamics of extreme precipitation and its response to greenhouse gas forcing.
Dr Angeline Pendergrass is an Assistant Professor at Cornell University. Prior to her appointment at Cornell in 2020, Dr. Pendergrass spent time as an Advanced Studies Program Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Project Scientist at NCAR and was a visiting member of both CIRES at the University of Colorado and ETH-Zurich in Switzerland.
Dr. Pendergrass's research focuses on extreme precipitation and Earth's hydrological cycle and its response to climate variability and change. As PI, Dr. Pendergrass leads the Precipitation and Climate Research Group in Atmospheric Sciences within the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University. The group uses observations, a hierarchy of models, and theory to study observed and simulated precipitation and understand how precipitation variability has changed over time and the societal impact of future changes. In addition to her research, Dr. Pendergrass has contributed to the U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA5) Chapter 2: Earth System Processes and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment Report on Water Cycle Changes.
The Committee on Climate Variability and Change awarded Dr. Mingfang Ting the 2021 Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award for her important contributions to our understanding of climate dynamics, often drawing upon ingenious generalizations of the stationary Rossby wave concept.
Dr. Mingfang Ting is a Research Professor in Ocean and Climate Physics, Adjunct Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Co-Senior Director for Education at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.
Dr. Ting's research connects global climate change to regional effects through understanding the dynamics of naturally occurring and anthropogenically-forced climate change. Her research connects atmospheric stationary waves and regional climate modes to impacts on precipitation extremes, including droughts and floods.
The Committee on Climate Variability and Change awarded Dr. Suzana Camargo its Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award in 2020 in recognition of her profound and extensive contributions to problems in tropical climate variability and climate change.
Dr. Suzana Camargo is an expert in tropical climate variability and a Research Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. She is also a Lecturer in the Sustainability Science Program at Columbia, an Adjunct Professor in Columbia’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and an Associate Member of the Earth Institute Faculty. Since 2015, she has served as Executive Director for Columbia’s Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate. Prior to joining Lamont-Doherty, Dr. Camargo was a scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia, an Associate Professor at São Paulo State University in Brazil, and a postdoctoral researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Germany.
Dr. Camargo has made several seminal contributions to our understanding of how tropical cyclones vary and respond to climate change. Her work has shown that global climate models can be used to study the climatology of tropical cyclone and can be analyzed to understand what causes their tracks, intensity, annual cycle, and other aspects of their climatology to respond to externally- and internally-driven forces. Beginning with her first contribution to climate research, she showed in a 2002 paper with Steve Zebiak that tropical cyclones could be detected and followed in climate models, which at the time were often still considered to be too coarse to be useful for tropical cyclone research. She showed that the climatology of storms generated by these models shares many of the same vital properties as observations, and in the years since she has documented how and why the tracks and frequency of storms respond to changes in simulated climate. She has also studied changes in temperature and precipitation cycles and extremes, the relationship between tornado frequency and environmental conditions, and the climatology of monsoonal depressions.
Dr. Camargo has also given extensively to the community, leading and organizing workshops and task forces. To take just a few examples, she has served as the Co-Chair of the U.S. CLIVAR Hurricane Working Group, a member of NOAA Task Forces on Model Diagnostics, Subseasonal to Seasonal variability, and model processes in CMIP5. She is a member of the World Meteorological Organization Expert Team on Climate Change Impacts from tropical cyclones, and the Secretary of the AGU Hazards Section. She is also an Editor for Geophysical Research Letters, and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Climate.