Indian-origin climate scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan wins Crafoord Prize in Geosciences

The Indian-origin climate scientist has been awarded the Crafoord Prize in Geosciences by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

• Veerabhadran Ramanathan wins Crafoord Prize in Geosciences for climate research
• His work revealed CFCs and aerosols' major impact on global warming
• Prize includes 8 million Swedish kronor, about ₹8 crore

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Veerabhadran Ramanathan has spent much of his life studying something most of us cannot see: tiny particles in the air and the way they quietly heat the planet. This week, that work earned him one of the world’s most respected science awards.

The Indian-origin climate scientist has been awarded the Crafoord Prize in Geosciences by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The prize, often described as a Nobel-level honour in fields outside the traditional Nobel categories, carries a cash award of 8 million Swedish kronor, roughly Rs 8 crore.

Ramanathan, who is based at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, has been researching climate change since the 1970s. Early in his career, he helped show that chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, were not just damaging the ozone layer but were also powerful greenhouse gases. That finding reshaped how scientists and policymakers understood the warming effect of industrial chemicals.

In the years that followed, his attention turned to aerosols and short-lived climate pollutants such as black carbon, the soot that comes from diesel engines, cookstoves and biomass burning. These particles hang in the atmosphere for a much shorter time than carbon dioxide, but they can have an outsized impact on regional warming, monsoons and even the melting of Himalayan glaciers.

Ramanathan’s research helped quantify just how much these pollutants affect the Earth’s energy balance. It also pointed to something practical: cutting emissions of black carbon and other short-lived pollutants could slow warming more quickly than many people realised, buying time while the world works on long-term carbon reductions.

The Royal Swedish Academy said he was being recognised for fundamental contributions to understanding how aerosols and climate pollutants influence the Earth system. His work has been widely cited in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has shaped global climate conversations for decades.

Outside the lab, Ramanathan has also worked to bridge science and policy, particularly in developing countries where air pollution and climate risks often overlap. He has repeatedly argued that cleaner air and climate action can go hand in hand.

The Crafoord Prize rotates among disciplines such as geosciences, astronomy and mathematics. For Ramanathan, the award feels like recognition not just of one discovery, but of a lifetime spent asking how the smallest particles in our air can have such enormous consequences for the planet.