Award Winner Spotlight
Bette L. Otto-Bliesner is a senior scientist and head of the Paleoclimate Modeling Program at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). An internationally recognized paleoclimatologist, she uses climate models and paleoclimate data to investigate Earth’s climate history, from ice ages and interglacial periods to ancient warm climates millions of years ago.
Her research has advanced understanding of climate variability, abrupt climate change, ice sheet stability, and interactions among the atmosphere, oceans, land, and ice. Otto-Bliesner has served as a lead author for multiple Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments and has played a leading role in the development of the Community Earth System Model (CESM), helping scientists around the world use information from past climates to better understand future climate change and potential tipping points.
In recognition of her groundbreaking contributions to paleoclimate modeling and her work advancing understanding of Earth’s climate system across time scales, Otto-Bliesner is the recipient of the 2026 AMS Syukuro Manabe Climate Research Award.
What was your reaction when you learned you had been selected for this honor?
I felt incredibly privileged and thrilled to receive the news. Having met Suki [Manabe] during the early stages of my career, I have always valued our discussions over the years about our shared passion for simulating past climates. Given that my background is rooted in meteorology, receiving this recognition from my colleagues at AMS is truly gratifying.
The award recognizes your groundbreaking work modeling past climate change across time scales. Looking back on your career, which research accomplishments are you most proud of?
My career in modeling past climate change has been a journey that has allowed me to explore the vast chronicle of Earth’s climate history, spanning the Carboniferous and Appalachian coal beds to the Last Millennium and Little Ice Age, and everything in between. Over time, my work progressed from using very simple models, such as the one I developed for my doctoral thesis, to increasingly complex Earth system models.
Two research accomplishments that I never expected early in my career were made possible by advances in Earth system models and increasingly powerful computers:
TraCE-21k Simulation: This was the first synchronously coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model simulation of transient climate changes from the Last Glacial Maximum to the modern era. It enabled us to assess how evolving orbital changes, greenhouse gases, paleogeography, ice sheets, and meltwater shaped the diverse evidence found in caves, lakes, ice cores, and marine records.
Last Interglacial Simulation: We successfully conducted a transient simulation of the Last Interglacial from 127,000 to 119,000 years ago to explore the co-evolution of the global climate and the Greenland Ice Sheet. This project highlighted how important interconnected Earth system processes—including the atmosphere, oceans, sea ice, and vegetation—are for understanding both ancient climates and future projections.
What first drew you to studying past climates?
My first foray into studying past climates came shortly after I finished my PhD at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. For my doctoral project, I constructed a simple climate model of intermediate complexity designed to simulate the modern seasonal cycle. That work was inspired by my time working with Warren Washington on the NCAR atmospheric model. John Kutzbach and I used this model to investigate how Milankovitch variations in incoming solar radiation could explain paleoclimatic evidence from India, Arabia, and Africa of intensified monsoon rains during the Holocene.
For readers outside the climate science community, why is understanding Earth’s past climate so important for understanding its future?
Because the instrumental record is short, it does not encompass the full range of changes we may face in the future. Earth’s deep history, however, contains evidence of climatic variations that extend far beyond this relatively brief historical window.
By applying the same Earth system models used for future projections to past climate periods, we can generate valuable information to test and validate our predictive capabilities.
Although ancient warm climates were often driven by different forcings than modern climate change, they still highlight the importance of incorporating complex processes and system-wide interactions into our understanding of the climate system. Exploring these past intervals deepens our knowledge of Earth’s climate, which is essential for refining and improving future projections.
You’ve helped advance understanding of climate variability and change over long time scales. How do those perspectives inform conversations about climate change today?
Studying climate over long time scales provides context that cannot be captured by the relatively short instrumental record. It allows us to examine how the Earth system responds to different forcings and how those responses unfold over centuries, millennia, and longer periods.
These perspectives help us better understand the range of climate responses that are possible and the complex interactions that can shape those responses. They also provide an important test for the models we use to project future climate change.
What role has interdisciplinary collaboration played in your work, and how has it evolved over the course of your career?
The success of my research has been deeply shaped by interdisciplinary collaboration. Engaging with a growing network of colleagues outside my immediate field has provided vital insights and opened new avenues of study.
Together, we have discussed the complexities of integrating proxy data with climate model results, including their different spatial and temporal resolutions. These discussions have helped us formulate more refined questions for collaborative modeling initiatives.
More recently, the ability to run high-resolution climate models for past geologic periods has catalyzed new discussions about how to interpret proxy records. Using geological evidence to reconstruct centennial- and millennial-scale hurricane activity, for instance, provides an important long-term perspective on variations in storm frequency and their links to broader global climate shifts.
Much of your work has integrated climate models with proxy records. What have been some of the biggest challenges and rewards of bringing those different lines of evidence together?
One of the challenges is understanding and reconciling the differences in the spatial and temporal resolution of proxy records and climate model simulations. These differences require us to think carefully about what each type of evidence can tell us and how the two can best be compared.
At the same time, bringing these lines of evidence together is one of the most rewarding aspects of paleoclimate research. Proxy records provide observations of past climate that models can help us interpret, while model simulations can provide a broader picture of the climate system and help explain patterns seen in the geological record. Together, they allow us to ask questions that neither approach could answer alone.
Climate models have advanced significantly during your career. What developments have most transformed our ability to study past climate change?
Two developments in climate modeling have transformed our ability to study past climate change and address some of the paradoxes presented by paleoclimate evidence.
First, incorporating more representations of, and interactions among, Earth system processes has advanced the complexity and capabilities of climate models. Second, increases in computing power have made it possible to conduct long transient simulations and simulations at higher resolution, allowing us to explore past climate change in much greater detail.
How has Syukuro Manabe’s work influenced your own research and the broader field?
As one of the true pioneers of climate modeling, Syukuro Manabe has greatly influenced my work. I have followed his research closely since my time at NCAR in the 1970s. Even today, I frequently return to his foundational papers. They remain deeply relevant to how we model both the past and future of our planet and continue to provide important insights into the development of climate modeling.
Your research often examines how different components of the Earth system interact. What are some of the most important lessons we’ve learned about those interactions from studying past climates?
One important lesson from studying past climates is the role of the land surface, particularly vegetation, in shaping Earth’s climate history. While the atmosphere influences vegetation, vegetation also provides important feedback to the carbon and hydrological cycles, potentially leading to cascading effects at regional and global scales.
Records of past vegetation indicate that representing vegetation in climate models is key to accurately simulating past climates. For example, during warm geologic periods such as the Cretaceous, the Last Interglacial, and the Holocene, high-latitude forest vegetation served as an important driver of polar warmth.
Similarly, integrating the Green Sahara during the Holocene into climate models revealed how changes in atmospheric circulation associated with the region’s vegetation and climate could be linked to paleoclimate records showing decreased precipitation and drier conditions across tropical South America.
What do you hope the scientific community will be able to understand about Earth’s climate system in the next decade that we don’t fully understand today?
Advances in our modeling and computational capabilities will allow us to ask new questions and provide more refined answers to existing ones. Data and simulations from past warmer periods can offer valuable insights into how the climate system may respond over long time scales and whether it can become locked into adjustments that persist throughout our own lives and continue to affect our children and grandchildren.
I also hope we will become increasingly capable of providing information about extreme weather events at the local level, giving communities more detailed information that can support preparedness and resilience.
Outside of your research, what keeps you inspired and energized after so many years of scientific discovery?
What keeps me inspired and energized, even after many years of scientific discovery, is the curiosity of my friends and family. Their inquisitive questions about my research demonstrate a genuine desire to understand Earth’s past and how it connects to our future.
That curiosity is a wonderful reminder of why communicating science matters and why there is always more to learn about our planet.
