Houston. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced the award of the 2026 Craford Prize in Earth Sciences to Indian-origin climate scientist Veerbhadran Ramanathan. The prestigious award, known as the “Nobel of Geosciences”, recognizes Ramanathan for his decades-long research on ‘super-pollutants’ and atmospheric ‘brown clouds’, which has led to a new direction in the understanding of global warming.

Ramanathan (82) made a historic discovery while working at NASA in 1975. They reported that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), widely used in aerosols and refrigeration, trap heat from the atmosphere 10,000 times more effectively than carbon dioxide.

Speaking to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Ramanathan said, “Until 1975, we believed that global warming was mainly caused by carbon dioxide. I was shocked to see the extent to which technology and human activities can change the environment.” Ramanathan was born in Madurai and brought up in Chennai.

He started his career as an engineer in a refrigerator factory in Secunderabad, where he worked on CFCs for the first time. He later received higher education from Annamalai University and the Indian Institute of Science.

Under the Crawford Award, he will be given an amount of approximately US $ 9 lakh and a gold medal. The award will be presented during ‘Crawford Days’ held in Stockholm in May 2026. Ramanathan’s research became the foundation of important international agreements such as the Montreal Protocol, which has prevented millions of tons of harmful emissions from being released into the atmosphere.