2009 Genius Grants Recognize Achievements in Climate Science

They're informally referred to as the genius grants, and since 1981, the MacArthur Foundation has recognized unbridled creativity and accomplishment in gifted (and busy) individuals from a wide variety of fields.

Annually, approximately two dozen grant recipients are selected from across the arts and sciences, and are given a substantial no-strings-attached cash award, with every encouragement to just keep doing what they're doing.

The 2009 grant recipients have just been announced, and the results would suggest that the MacArthur Foundation is keen to encourage our best minds continue to tackle the global climate challenge.

Among this year's crop of geniuses singled out for the very prestigious accolade are two whose professional focus is dedicated to better understanding the world's climate systems.

Daniel Sigman is a Princeton University biogeochemist whose work involves the investigation of the role that the oceans have played in the global carbon cycle as the climate has changed over geologic time.

Peter Huybers is a Harvard climate scientist whose focus is on the most recent chunk of geologic time, the Pleistocene epoch, taking place over the past 1.8 million years. Huybers' work draws upon a variety of physical and natural sciences in forming theories of global climate change that tie intermittent ice ages to cyclical variations in the angle of the planet's axial tilt.

Biographies and backgrounds on all of the remarkable people justly recognize for their gifts and their hard work -- artists and economists, doctors and novelists -- may be perused for inspiration at the Foundation's Web site.

Image courtesy of NASA, via Wikimedia Commons