Congratulations to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Research Scientist Paul Durack, who recently received the World Climate Research Program’s (WCRP) 2018 Data Prize for his leadership of the input4MIPs project.

Durack was selected in late December 2018 by a prize committee comprised of representatives from the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), Atmospheric Observation Panel for Climate, and Terrestrial Observation Panel for Climate and the Ocean Observation for Climate. The committee was impressed by Durack’s body of work and the quality of his contributions to the development of documented climate datasets. The committee considered a range of criteria, including the importance of the contribution in the field, as well as community impact.

WCRP and GCOS established the prize in recognition of the essential role that data sets play in support of climate science. It is awarded annually for outstanding contributions to data product generation, data management, data preservation, data monitoring, and other data relevant activities by an early- to mid-career researcher.

The improved provenance of forcing datasets in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) will enable enhanced quantitative multi-model analyses of the causes of variability and change to the simulated climate system.