Indian-Origin Climate Scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan Wins Prestigious Crafoord Prize

• Veerabhadran Ramanathan, an Indian-origin climate scientist, has been awarded the Crafoord Prize in Geosciences by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
• The Crafoord Prize is considered a Nobel-level honour for fields outside traditional Nobel categories and includes an 8 million Swedish kronor (approx. Rs 8 crore) cash award.
• Ramanathan's research, spanning since the 1970s, highlighted the warming effect of CFCs and later focused on aerosols and short-lived climate pollutants like black carbon.
• His work quantified the impact of these pollutants on Earth's energy balance and demonstrated that cutting their emissions could rapidly slow global warming.
• The Royal Swedish Academy recognised him for fundamental contributions to understanding how aerosols and climate pollutants influence the Earth system, with his research widely cited by the IPCC.