Bio

Dr. V. Balaji is affiliated with Princeton University’s Cooperative Institute on Modeling the Earth System.

He has headed the Modeling Systems Division at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory since 2003, and is Associate Faculty at the Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering (PICSciE). With a background in physics and climate science, he has also become an expert in the area of parallel computing and scientific infrastructure.

He founded and served from 2014-2019 as co-chair of the WGCM Infrastructure Panel (WIP), tasked with developing the scientific requirements for the global data infrastructure underlying the Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP), a pillar of the IPCC Assessment Reports of the state of the Earth’s climate.

He was an author on the 2012 National Academies Report A National Strategy for Advancing Climate Modeling and the 2016 National Academies Report, From Maps to Models: Augmenting the Nation’s Geospatial Intelligence Capabilities.

He received the Make Our Planet Great Again award from the French Government in 2017 for Project Hermès, affiliated with the Institute Pierre-Simon Laplace in Paris.

He serves on the Scientific Review Group for the UK Met Office Hadley Centre, and the Advisory Panel for NCAR’s Computing and Information Systems Lab (CISL). Until 2019 he served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, the Scientific Advisory Panel for the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), as well as for DOE’s Accelerated Climate Modeling for Energy (ACME) Project.

He is a sought-after speaker and lecturer and is committed to provide training in the use of climate models in developing nations, leading workshops for advanced students and researchers in South Africa and India.

Select bibliography

• Climbing down Charney’s ladder: Machine Learning and the post-Dennard era of computational climate science, accepted in Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A, 2020.
• Requirements for a global data infrastructure in support of CMIP6, GMD, 2018.
• Causes and Probability of Occurrence of Extreme Precipitation Events like Chennai 2015, J Climate 2018.
• Eutrophication will increase during the 21st century as a result of precipitation changes, Science, 2017.
• CPMIP: measurements of real computational performance of Earth system models, CMIP6 Special Issue, GMD 2017.
• The art and science of climate model tuning, BAMS 2016.
• Coarse-grained component concurrency in Earth system modeling, GMD 2016.
• Climate Computing: The State of Play, CiSE 2015.
• Scientific Computing in the Age of Complexity, ACM 2013.
• From Maps to Models: Augmenting the Nation’s Geospatial Intelligence Capabilities, National Academies, 2016.
• A National Strategy for Advancing Climate Modeling, National Academies, 2012.
• GFDL Bibliography
• Google Scholar profile

Appointments and Service

• Head, Modeling Systems Division, NOAA/GFDL
• Member, Science Board, NOAA/GFDL
• Member, Research Council, NOAA/GFDL
• Chair, WGCM Infrastructure Panel (WIP), 2014-2019.
• Chair, Executive Committee, Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF)
• Member, Executive Committee, Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF)
• Member, WCRP Working Group on Climate Modeling, 2017-2023.
• Member, Science Review Group, UK Met Office Hadley Centre, 2019-2022.
• Chair, Scientific Advisory Panel, NCAR Computing and Information Systems Lab (NCAR/CISL, 2016-2019, continuing as member, 2020-2022).
• Member, Scientific Advisory Board, Max-Planck Institut fur Meteorologie (MPI-M, 2014-2019).
• Member, Scientific Advisory Panel, NCAR, 2016-2019.
• Member, Scientific Advisory Committee, DOE Accelerated Climate Model for Energy (ACME) Project.