Supported by more than 35 years of professional excellence, Dr. Anthony James Brazel is a widely regarded figure in the field of geography. Since 2011, he has been recognized as a professor emeritus faculty at Arizona State University. During his longstanding tenure at the university, he began teaching in 1974 as an assistant professor of geography before being promoted to associate professor and full professor. Concurrently, he served as chair of the geography department between 1991 and 1997, having also served as a climatologist for the State of Arizona from 1979 to 1999.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Brazel taught geography at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada, from 1970 to 1974. He commenced his career in 1968 as a research scientist at the U.S. C.E. Lake Survey in Detroit, Michigan. Over the course of his career, he has made significant contributions to research efforts within the field of geography, becoming one of the very first geographers to model aspects of alpine climatology using digital and numerical surface climate models. Furthermore, Dr. Brazel’s research on desertification and dust storms was crucial in understanding climate change in arid regions of the world.
Impressively, Dr. Brazel is a fellow of several organizations, including the Arizona-Nevada Academy of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Meteorological Society and the American Association of Geographers, among others. He has also contributed his expertise to numerous scholarly publications, having most recently co-authored an article for Science of the Total Environment in 2020.
The recipient of a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a master’s degree in geography from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Dr. Brazel ultimately earned a Doctor of Philosophy in geography from the University of Michigan in 1972. In light of his success, he was honored as the namesake of the Anthony J. Brazel Research Exam Award at Arizona State University in 2007. He has also won a plethora of other accolades, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of American Geographers Climate Specialty Group in 2010. Looking ahead, Dr. Brazel intends to continue enjoying his retirement.
