Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric and Climate Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego.

Professor Ramanathan serves in the council of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that reports to Pope Francis. He chairs a major initiative of the ten-campus UC system effort titled: Bend the Curve towards Carbon Neutrality and Climate Stability.

Professor Ramanathan has been conducting original research in Climate and Atmospheric Science since the 1970s. He discovered the super greenhouse effect of halo carbons (CFCs) in 1975 and used observations from satellites and unmanned aircraft to quantify the large global warming effect of black carbon. In 1980 he predicted that global warming will be detected above the background noise by 2000, a prediction which was verified by UN experts in 2001. He led international field campaigns, developed unmanned aircraft platforms for tracking brown cloud pollution worldwide, and educates and trains the next generation of scientists. Based on his research, he developed a new approach for mitigating climate change that involves mitigating emissions of four short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) to drastically reduce near-term warming and slowing down the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers. He is now implementing this new approach in the field.

He now works on issues related to climate justice and founded, designed, and leads Project Surya; an extended effort to characterize and mitigate environmental impacts of cooking with solid biomass as a way to protect the bottom three billion from climate change. Teaming up with the Pontifical academy of sciences, he is forming an alliance between science, policy and religion to seek solutions to the climate change problem in an apolitical forum.

He has been elected to the US National Academy and the Royal Swedish Academy. In 2013, the UN named him Champion of Earth and Foreign Policy named him a thought leader.