Dr. Russ Schnell

Dr. Russell Schnell grew up in a remote, rural part of Alberta, Canada, in a small village where he was somewhat related to about 200 of the 900 inhabitants in the area. As a young Royal Canadian Air Cadet, he was selected—out of a pool of 20,000 cadets—to spend the summer of 1963 as a guest of the Israeli Air Force, an early sign of the global reach his career would later reflect. He attended universities in Alberta, Newfoundland, Hawaii, Wales, and Wyoming, earning degrees in Biology, Geography, Chemistry, and Atmospheric Science.

 

Over a distinguished 45-year career with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Russell held leadership roles across the globe, including two years in Kenya and eight years as Director of the Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory in Hawaii. He later served as Deputy Director of NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, overseeing a global network of climate monitoring stations. He has authored or co-authored nearly 200 peer-reviewed scientific publications and is credited with the discovery of biological ice nuclei—microscopic particles that initiate precipitation and are now used in artificial snowmaking systems around the world. His Arctic research was instrumental in tracing high-altitude air pollution back to Eastern Europe, and he helped establish key observatories in developing regions to expand climate data collection worldwide.

 

His work has taken him to 92 countries and contributed meaningfully to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was jointly awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize alongside Al Gore for its efforts to build and share knowledge about climate change. In retirement, Russell continues to serve communities globally by building and installing more than 129 Little Free Libraries—crafted entirely from recycled materials—across the U.S. and on every continent, including one at the South Pole.