Dr. Louise Nuijens never intended for herself or her work to be the center of anyone’s attention, but the world had plans of its own.

As a shy child who was teased a lot by her peers, she never thought she’d end up as a public-facing weather girl at a popular radio station. And when she decided to study clouds, she never thought that her work would end up playing a critical role in the middle of a global crisis.

Growing up in the Netherlands, she loved math, physics, and theater, though she was often the one writing and directing behind-the-scenes. One of her teachers had been a meteorologist in the army, and she was inspired by the idea of applying her interests to something that impacts us every day, like the weather.

Dr. Nuijens is naturally drawn to exploration and discovery, so after college she decided to pursue a Masters project in the US. She was invited to study clouds at UCLA, even though she knew nothing about them at the time. It wasn’t until she flew through the puffy, cumulus clouds over the sea east of Antigua, taking measurements of the cloud fields from a small research plane, that she became fascinated by the role they played in the complex web of nature.

Shallow cumulus clouds are unique. When they form over land, they don’t typically rain. But when they form over the sea, they do. This puzzle intrigued her, so she extended her Masters program to pursue a PhD on the topic.

As her career progressed, so did the world’s understanding of how the climate was changing and the important role of weather systems in regulating our environments. It’s important to understand how each component of the weather works and how they interact. And it turns out, one of the most difficult parts of the weather system for scientists to model is cumulus clouds.

Just like that, Dr. Nuijens’ interest in these mysterious clouds became a lot more important in the fight against global warming.

Today, Dr. Nuijens embraces her role as a public communicator and climate scientist working to improve models of how these clouds might behave, so that we can make better predictions about the planet’s future.

In a way, her path mirrors that of the clouds that she studies: sometimes the most unassuming actors have a critical role to play.