White House Reappoints Vörösmarty to Arctic Commission

Charles J. Vörösmarty, director of the ASRC’s Environmental CrossRoads initiative, has been reappointed to the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, an independent federal agency that advises the president and Congress on climate change and other environmental research policies.

Vörösmarty’s reappointment by President Obama was announced by the White House on August 7. He was first appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006.

As a member of the Arctic Research Commission, Vörösmarty was the lead author of a 2010 report calling for researchers to develop ways of scaling up studies of arctic science. The report said that studying local sites has helped researchers understand climate change dynamics, but “it’s a different story when looking across the entire arctic spectrum.” Researchers need to improve methods of larger scale research across a variety of disciplines, said the report. At CUNY, Vörösmarty’s Environmental CrossRoads initiative includes a focus on developing computer models used in synthesizing studies of water and climate.

Vörösmarty is a founding member of the Global Water System Project, a forum for the input of more than 200 scientists under the International Council for Science’s Global Environmental Change Programs. He recently won one of two national awards through the National Science Foundation to execute studies on hydrologic synthesis.