The American Meteorological Society (AMS) has officially announced its 2027 award recipients on its website. Professor Zhang Renhe – Director of the IRDR International Centre of Excellence on Risk Interconnectivity and Governance on Climate Change (IRDR ICoE-RIGCC), and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences – has been honored with the Sverdrup Gold Medal for his fundamental contributions to understanding Asian monsoon variability, air–sea interaction over the western North Pacific, and coupled modes such as ENSO.
Established in 1964, the Sverdrup Gold Medal is one of the highest international awards in the fields of oceanography, atmospheric science, and their interactions. This marks the first time in the medal's history that it has been awarded to a meteorologist based in mainland China.
Professor Zhang's research focuses on climate dynamics, including tropical large-scale air–sea interaction, the Asian monsoon, and Tibetan Plateau meteorology. He has elucidated the mechanisms by which ENSO influences the East Asian monsoon via the western North Pacific anomalous anticyclone, identified the roles of tropical coupled ocean–atmosphere waves and nonlinear oceanic temperature advection in ENSO evolution, and revealed two pathways through which the Indian monsoon affects the East Asian monsoon – via lower-level moisture transport and upper-level South Asian High. He has also proposed mechanisms for soil moisture impacts on the East Asian monsoon and has effectively improved China's short-term climate operational prediction skills using Argo ocean data.
As Director of the IRDR ICoE Fudan, Professor Zhang has been a longstanding advocate for international collaboration in integrated disaster risk research. He currently serves as Principle Investigator of the International Major Science Program on Asia–Africa–Australia Monsoon (IP-TAM), a major international research initiative initiated and organized by China, focusing on monsoon variability under climate change and its impacts on regional and global extreme weather and climate events.
