We would like to congratulate Dr Cheng Sun for being awarded the 2023 IAMAS Early Career Medal for his outstanding contributions to the understanding of Atlantic climate variability. Dr Cheng Sun was nominated by Dr Jianping Li. Dr Cheng Sun has over 90 publications. Nominations are solicitated from all the Commissions. The nomination document needed to provide clear evidence of the candidate’s contribution to science and service in the scientific community. The award must be made to a candidate within 10 years of the attainment of the PhD and must be under the age of 40.  Dr Sun is currently a Professor at Beijing Normal University. He received his PhD degree in Atmospheric Science in 2012. In Cheng’s early career, he has done much to influence the direction of ocean-atmosphere interaction research and the use of intermediate-complexity general circulation models to improve the understanding of climate variability and predictability. He has conducted more than ten years of continuous and in-depth research on the Atlantic climate variability and achieved a series of important scientific discoveries and pioneering innovative results. Among his many achievements and accomplishments, he proposed a new theoretical framework to interpret multidecadal climate oscillations from the dynamical coupling between atmosphere and deep-ocean circulation and elaborated the fundamental forcing and feedback mechanisms.

Additionally, Dr Sun has systematically revealed the atmospheric and oceanic pathways for the impacts of Atlantic Ocean on the global climate and developed simple and intermediate-complexity models to depict global climate teleconnections. Not only are Dr Sun’s research contributions outstanding, but his international scientific cooperations and academic services are extraordinary. Dr Sun has maintained long-term international cooperation with several leading climate research teams in the USA, South Korea and Italy and has been an associate and visiting scholar at many internationally renowned institutes. He is active in international academic exchange and has participated in many international and domestic academic conferences. He also serves as the leading convener of several international conferences and regularly reviews manuscripts for internationally recognized journals. Currently, he serves as an editorial board member of two peer-reviewed international SCI journals, Nature Partner Journal, Climate and Atmospheric Science and Frontiers in Earth Science. In addition, he is on the review boards of China Academic Degrees and Graduate Education Development Center and Natural Science Foundation of China. He has participated in many Commissions and IUGG activities.

Mary Scholes (VP IAMAS and convenor of the Award Committee)