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 (18 years old) out of a pool of 20,00, he was selected spend the summer of 1963 as a guest of the Israeli Air Force.

 

He attended universities in Alberta, Newfoundland, Hawaii, Wales and Wyoming earning degrees in Biology. Geography, Chemistry and Atmospheric Science.  Russell had a 45-year career at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that included 2 years in Kenya, Africa and 8 years as director of the Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory, Hawaii.  He was deputy director of the NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, Boulder, CO for the decade before retiring from NOAA.  He has about 200 scientific publications that include the discovery of biological ice nuclei that are initiators of precipitation and used in all ski hill snowmaking globally. He also established from aircraft programs in the Arctic,  that dense Arctic air pollution originated in Eastern Europe.  His research activities have taken him to 92 countries.  In his spare time, he builds Little Free Libraries from recycled materials (85 to date) that are  installed free across the U.S. and on every continent on Earth including one at the South Pole.  

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Russell was a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize as a member of the IPPC that gained the award along with Al Gore.