Two University of Colorado at Boulder researchers have received prestigious 2002 Fellowship awards from the American Geophysical Union.
Roger Bilham, a CU-Boulder geography professor at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES, and David Fahey, a CIRES research associate, both were named fellows. CIRES is a joint center of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
AGU is an organization of international geophysical scientists that annually recognizes members who have made outstanding science and community contributions. The awards -- made to no more than 0.1 percent of AGU's 38,000 members - were presented to Bilham and Fahey at the organization's annual fall meeting held in San Francisco Dec. 6 to Dec. 10.
Bilham is internationally known for his work designing instruments and making measurements to study deformation of mountains, volcanoes and earthquake-prone regions. "Anyone around the world who has done significant work on crustal deformation has heard of Bilham," said Vineet Gahalaud, a geologist with the International Institute of Geological Sciences in India. "He is very deserving of this recognition."
Bilham was cited by AGU for his "contribution to the application of geodesy to fundamental tectonic problems and to the development of geodetic instrumentation."Ìý
Bilham and his students have worked on four different continents and made the first estimates for the spreading rate of the African Rift, the motion of the Caribbean Plate, the collision velocity of India with Asia and the widening rates of Iceland's mid-Atlantic rift.
Fahey, who works as a geophysicist in the NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory in Boulder, is known for the first-ever measurements of nitrogen oxide in the Arctic and Antarctic stratospheres using a technique he developed with other NOAA researchers in the late 1980s. Since then he has participated in several hundred high-altitude research flights to determine the role of nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere, especially in relation to the creation and destruction of ozone.
Fahey was cited by AGU for "elucidating the role of nitrogen oxides in the stratosphere via field measurements and interpretations." "I think it is fair to say David is the world's number one expert on measuring reactive nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere," said Adrian Tuck, a program chief at NOAA. "His research has consistently produced very important discoveries, and is central to understanding the ozone hole and other atmospheric conditions.
Fahey has participated in 10 NASA campaigns involving high altitude aircraft in the past 16 years. By calculating the natural balance of ozone and other compounds high in the atmosphere, he and others have shown how human activity has contributed to decreases in ozone at the poles.
In 2002, just 41 scientists belonging to AGU were honored as Fellows.