*Citations for his work are 564, 297, 163,  155, 150, 123 ...  Anyone who has published papers with that many citations is obviously influential in his subject and thus meets the basic principle of WP:PROF. I cannot imagine why it's been challengedor, more precisely, i can't imagine it would have been challenged if he worked in any other field than climate change. .  Since Project scientist for Jason 3 was present even in the version on Sept 7, nominating this for CSD seems to be  without consideration of  "indications of importance or significance"  It was cited well enough to pass BLP Prod even then also. ''''''