J. David Neelin, UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in recognition of his outstanding scholarly and scientific and achievement.
This year’s 87 new Fellows will be inducted during a ceremony Nov. 27 in Victoria, British Columbia.
The Royal Society of Canada praised Neelin as “an international leader in the study of the interaction between, and the dynamics of, the atmosphere and ocean” who has conducted “pioneering work towards developing an understanding of the mechanisms that create the El Nino/Southern Oscillation phenomenon and impact its predictability.” He has also published “numerous seminal studies on tropical atmospheric dynamics and climate interactions.”
Neelin is fascinated by what he has called the Achilles heel of early tropical ocean-atmosphere theory, the complex interaction between the large-scale tropical atmosphere and moist convection.