The AMS Cleveland Abbe Award recognizes three decades of leadership that strengthened atmospheric research capabilities, access, and impact
Jim Mather poses with instruments at PNNL’s Atmospheric Measurements Laboratory, one of the nation’s leading research facilities for understanding aerosols, clouds, and their interactions.
(Photo by Andrea Starr | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory atmospheric scientist Jim Mather has been selected to receive the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Cleveland Abbe Award for Distinguished Service to the Atmospheric and Related Sciences. The award will be presented at the 107th AMS Annual Meeting in January 2027 in Denver, Colorado.
Each year, AMS recognizes outstanding contributions to the atmospheric science community by individuals and organizations. The Cleveland Abbe Award honors activities that have “materially contributed to the progress of the atmospheric and related sciences or to the application of the atmospheric and related sciences to general, social, economic, or humanitarian welfare,” according to AMS.
Mather, who recently retired after nearly 20 years as director of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility and will retire from PNNL this fall, was cited by AMS for “exceptional, sustained service that has strengthened the infrastructure, integrity, accessibility, and scientific impact of one of the atmospheric sciences’ most important observational user facilities.”
In addition to receiving the Abbe award, Mather was elected as a 2027 AMS Fellow for his “outstanding contributions to the atmospheric or related oceanic or hydrological sciences or their applications during a substantial period of years.”
Mather devoted more than three decades to ARM. He joined ARM in 1994 as a postdoctoral research associate at Pennsylvania State University and came to PNNL in 2001. He subsequently managed a mobile atmospheric observatory, co-led the influential 2006 Tropical Warm Pool – International Cloud Experiment in Australia, and helped launch an ARM program for aerial vehicles. He also participated in ARM field campaigns around the world, from the tropics to the Arctic.
Mather became ARM director in 2007, assuming responsibility for the facility’s strategic planning, day-to-day technical activities, budgeting, engineering development, contracting, property management, and interactions with the scientific community. He led a distributed team of more than 300 people across nine DOE national laboratories, including PNNL, as well as non-DOE labs and universities.
During his tenure, Mather oversaw a major expansion of ARM’s capabilities, scientific scope, and international reach. ARM now serves more than 1,000 scientific users each year and has collected over 8 petabytes of atmospheric data worldwide to help improve the understanding and representation of cloud, aerosol, and precipitation processes in Earth system models.
Published: August 12, 2026