Thomas Vonder Haar Receives AOS Alumni Award for Outstanding Achievement
November 20, 2024
The Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) at UW–Madison is thrilled to announce Dr. Thomas Vonder Haar was selected to receive the 2024 AOS Distinguished Alumni Award for Outstanding Achievement.
Vonder Haar is a University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Colorado State University, where he joined the faculty in 1970. He received his MS (1964) and PhD (1968) from AOS, and his postdoctoral appointment was in the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) at UW–Madison.
With more than 50 years of research and teaching experience, Vonder Haar has been instrumental in advancing the field of satellite meteorology. He has hundreds of publications, co-authored Satellite Meteorology – An Introduction, the first textbook in the field, and was a founding member and director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA). His accolades list includes being an American Meteorological Society Honorary Member and Fellow, an American Geophysical Union fellow, and an election to the National Academy of Engineering, among many others.
Vonder Haar’s scientific involvement includes Chairman of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Working Group on Radiation Fluxes, the WCRP Joint Scientific Advisory Committee, and the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment Science Steering Group. He has been on multiple NASA teams, including NIMBUS-3, NIMBUS-7, Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE), and CloudSat. He is also a member of the UCAR Board of Trustees and the Desert Research Institute Board of Directors.
The award will be formally conferred during the AOS Robock Alumni Reception at the Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society in New Orleans on Tuesday evening, January 14, 2025.