Shaun Lovejoy

The 2019 Lewis Fry Richardson Medal is awarded to Shaun Lovejoy for pioneering and leading research on multifractal cascade dynamics in hydrology, climate and weather, leading to a new class of comprehensive stochastic, rather than deterministic, sub-grid models.

Shaun Lovejoy is a world leader in nonlinear geophysics. For nearly thirty years, he has been making fundamental and pioneering contributions to the theory and applications of scaling and multifractals to complex geo-systems with a particular emphasis on the atmosphere, rainfall, weather and climate, including an assessment of human influence, and with further applications to geomorphology, marine geo-sciences, or the climate on Mars. Atmospheric and other fluctuations can be understood in terms of a stochastic process founded on a generalisation of scale invariance that is expressed in terms of multifractal statistics.

Indeed, Lovejoy has been at the forefront in the characterisation of nonlinear processes and intermittency in geophysics, driving and inspiring the application of generalised scaling theory in hydrology and hydrometeorology, allowing for downscaling and upscaling of clouds and rainfall, systematic quantitative analyses of orographic land-atmosphere interactions, and elucidating convective-nonconvective stochastic transitions. He is a prolific and well-cited author across multiple disciplines, he is the author or co-author of two books, and his work has had strong impacts as assessed by bibliometric data. Lovejoy also has an exemplary record of service to nonlinear geophysics both within EGU and for the American Geophysical Union, being for over twenty years, a cheerleader and tireless champion of these topics and nurturing for all a sense of community.

In conclusion, this is a most deserved recognition for ground-breaking and impactful interdisciplinary contributions not only to nonlinear geophysics, but also to atmospheric Sciences, hydrology and climate.

Publication resulting from the medal

Lovejoy, S.: Fractional relaxation noises, motions and the fractional energy balance equation, Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 29, 93–121, https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-29-93-2022, 2022.