The Gerald A. Meehl Symposium honors Dr. Gerald (Jerry) Meehl’s extraordinary 40+ year career at NCAR, marked by his outstanding service to the climate research community and pioneering use of coupled climate models to tackle complex climate challenges. Jerry played a key role in the development of the Community Earth System Model (CESM) and its predecessor, the Community Climate System Model (CCSM), as well as the DOE Parallel Climate Model (PCM). His leadership extended to chairing the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) Panel of CLIVAR under the World Climate Research Program, providing the foundational framework for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR2 and AR3 reports.

Jerry’s scientific contributions encompass groundbreaking work on climate variability and change, including studies on global warming hiatus, extreme temperature events, monsoons, and decadal climate variability and predictability. He has served as a lead author for multiple IPCC reports (AR2-5) and was part of the IPCC science team that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Jerry has received numerous awards, including the AMS Jule G. Charney Award and the Sverdrup Gold Medal.

The Gerald A. Meehl Symposium will take place during the 105th AMS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA on Tuesday, January 14, 2025. The symposium welcomes any abstracts within climate modeling, variability and change with specific focus on four major areas of Jerry’s research:

1. Improvement in climate model fidelity through improved model physics and machine learning
2. Detection and attribution of the observed climate variability across different timescales using models
3. Climate predictability and prediction on subseasonal to decadal timescales
4. Climate projection and changes in extremes

The symposium will feature invited and contributed oral presentations, a poster session, and a dinner where attendees can reminisce and honor Jerry. Speakers will include individuals who have influenced, collaborated with, or been influenced by Jerry or who are interested in the general research direction of Jerry. The symposium offers participants an opportunity to reflect on the field of climate predictability, variability, and change by exploring the governing mechanisms, model development, and future research directions.