Jagdish Shukla

Jagdish Shukla (born 1944) is an Indian meteorologist and Distinguished University

Professor at George Mason University in the United States.

Early years[edit]
Shukla was born in 1944 in the village of Mirdha in the Ballia district of Uttar Pradesh, India. He
passed from the S.R.S. High School, Sheopur, in the first class with distinction in Mathematics
and Sanskrit. He studied science, firstly outside school, then at S.C. College, Ballia. At Banaras
Hindu University, at the age of 18, he passed BS (honors) with Physics, Mathematics, and Geology
(first class) followed by an MS in Geophysics in 1964 and PhD in Geophysics in 1971. He
subsequently gained an ScD in Meteorology fromMIT in 1976.
Professional activities[edit]
Shukla's contributions to the understanding of the predictability of weather and climate include the
Asian monsoon dynamics, deforestation and desertification. He is the author or co-author of over
150 scientific papers.
He helped found weather and climate research centers in India and was the founding scientific
leader at the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (NCMRWF) in New Delhi. He
has also established research institutions in Brazil, Italy, and the USA.
He has been associated with the World Climate Research Programme since its inception and was
involved in their Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere program (TOGA), the first coupled atmosphere-
ocean initiative. Since 2001, he has been a member of its Joint Scientific Committee and chair of its
Modelling Panel.
He founded and directed the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies,
[1]
which aims to improve
understanding of climate variability and predictability on intraseasonal to decadal time scales within
a changing climate.
He is a Distinguished University Professor
[2]
at George Mason University, USA, and chair of the
Climate Dynamics department.
He was a founder member of the weather and climate research group at the International Centre for
Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy and led the group's activities until 1997.
He has established Gandhi College in his village for education of rural students especially women.
[3]

Positions[edit]
He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, a Fellow of the Indian Meteorological
Society and an Associate Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences. He is currently a member
of the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Program of the World
Meteorological Organization and a Commissioner in the Virginia Governor's Commission on Climate
Change.
Awards[edit]
Shukla Receives 2012 Padma Shri Award from the Government of India
52nd International Meteorological Organization Prize by the World Meteorological
Organization in 2008.
[4]

Walker Gold Medal of the Indian Meteorological Society
Carl Gustav Rossby Research Medal from the American Meteorological Society
[5]

Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal of the NASA