AIMES Thanks Scientists for Their Service

The AIMES scientific steering committee is comprised of volunteer scientists who go above and beyond their professional demands to help guide and build the AIMES international scientific program and network. We want to thank three of our steering committee members for their service-minded dedication, scientific vision, and commitment of time and energy over the course of their terms in AIMES. Victor Brovkin (Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Germany), Lisa Alexander (University of New South Wales, Australia), and Govindasamy Bala (Indian Institute of Science, India) completed their final year of their terms in 2021. Below we highlight their research and contributions to the AIMES project!

Prof. Lisa Alexander, Professor at the Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney, Australia, served two terms as an AIMES SSC member. She made important contributions to the AIMES science plan and implementation plan and encouraged the inclusion of early career researchers in AIMES activities. Her research focuses primarily on understanding the variability and driving mechanisms of climate extremes, including how land surface changes or preconditioning might act to dampen or exacerbate heatwaves. Of particular significance is her ongoing work assessing global changes in temperature and rainfall extremes, which has contributed significantly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments. 

Prof. Govindasamy Bala, Professor at the Center for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, served two terms as an AIMES SSC member. Bala provided support and input in the new organization and scientific direction of AIMES and liaised with Future Earth as a working group leader within the Earth Commission. He is helping to organize a webinar series on ‘Tipping Elements, Irreversibility, and Abrupt Change’ and is co-leading the Tipping Point Model Intercomparison Project (TIPMIP). In his research, Prof. Bala develops and uses Earth system models to understand the causes and effects of climate change, and served as a Lead Author of the fourth chapter of Future global climate: scenario-based projections and near-term information for the 6th assessment IPCC report. 

Prof. Victor Brovkin is head of a group on Climate-Biogeosphere Interactions at the Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology and professor at the University of Hamburg, Germany. He served two terms as an AIMES SSC member and four years as the AIMES co-chair. Prof. Brovkin has been integral to many of the AIMES activities over the last four years including hosting SSC meetings, developing workshops, and leading the Nature Geoscience review on ‘Past abrupt changes, tipping points and cascading impacts in the Earth system.’ His research is focused on interactions between terrestrial ecosystems and the climate, including biogeophysical and biogeochemical feedbacks. Victor Brovkin has developed global dynamic vegetation models and applied them for pioneering studies on the stability of climate-vegetation systems.

We thank Lisa, Bala and Victor for their vision and for being fantastic colleagues to work with on the steering committee!