Raymond S. Bradley

The 2007 Hans Oeschger Medal is awarded to Raymond S. Bradley for his contribution to paleoclimate reconstruction from continental archives and for being instrumental in the multi-proxy approach leading to the quantification of climate change over the last millennium.

Ray Bradley is Director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (USA) and a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences. He has a broad interest in paleoclimate reconstruction with a focus on continental archives, allowing to describe and identifying processes at work for relatively recent changes (from the last centuries to the entire Holocene). This work encompasses studies in the Arctic, in the Andes and in Africa, partly dedicated to present-day variability of climate variables or of climate indicators, such as water isotopes. He is interested both in climate variability and climate processes (e.g. the role of volcanoes and solar modulation). Ray Bradley has been instrumental in initiating the approach aiming to reconstruct the climate of the last millenium from a multi-proxy approach, leading to a series of papers co-authored with Michael Mann and Malcom Hughes, with the curve representing the climate over the last millenium, being later popularized as the “Hockey Stick”.

Ray Bradley has written or edited eleven books on climatic change, and authored more than 120 refereed articles on the subject. In 2004, he received a Doctor of Science (D.Sc) degree from Southampton University (U.K.) for his contributions to the field of paleoclimatology. He has dedicated a large part of his time to promoting paleoclimate research at the international level, acting as chairman of PAGES (PAst Global changES) of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program.