Hats off to Roger G. Barry
Director of
the World Data Center for
Glaciology
Distinguished Professor
CIRES Fellow
Former Director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center
In December 2010, we wished a fond retirement to Distinguished Professor and long-time CIRES Fellow Roger G. Barry. He has directed the World Data Center for Glaciology (WDC) since 1976. Under Barry's leadership the WDC/National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) grew from a staff of two in 1977 to about 90 in 2008, when he stepped down as Director. A leader in the cryospheric science community, Barry shares a legacy of discovery about Arctic and mountain climates and cryospheric processes, climate change, and collaborations incorporating indigenous environmental knowledge into scientific weather analysis. He published Atmosphere, Weather and Climate in 1968 (now in its ninth edition), Mountain Weather and Climate (three editions, two translations) ,
and three other textbooks, as well as over 200 scientific papers and chapters. Barry's fifth and most recent book, The Global Cryosphere — Past, Present and Future, will be published in June 2011. His outstanding scholarly work led him to be a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellow in 1982, a 2001 Fulbright teaching fellow for Geography in Moscow, and a reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He was awarded the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 2008 and currently holds a Humboldt Prize Fellowship. Barry served seven years as the associate director for the Cryospheric and Polar Processes Division, and inspired nearly 60 climate and cryospheric graduate students.
