But there's another local Nobel connection that went unnoticed.
Wei Min Hao, an atmospheric chemist who leads the U.S. Forest Service's Fire Sciences Laboratory, also shared in the prize.
Like Running, Hao was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change. The United Nations panel is spread across the globe and includes 600 scientists and researchers.
Most of the blame for human-caused greenhouse gases goes to smokestacks, tailpipes and power plants, but Hao's research focuses on how smoke from deforestation fires and wildfires affects global climate.
Every year, people set fires that burn vast stretches of grasslands and woodlands across the planet as a way to clear land for grazing, farming, logging and human settlement. Wildfires started by lightning, people and other causes also burn millions of acres.
Smoke from those fires is packed with carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane and other chemicals, making them a major contributor to greenhouse gases, Hao said.
Carbon dioxide, which lingers long after the smoke clears, bounces heat back at the Earth's surface rather than allowing it to escape. At the same time, aerosols released by the fires cool the atmosphere.
The smoke's chemical pollutants eventually rise into the jet stream and disperse around the globe. The atmosphere is partially cleansed when the sun's ultraviolet light hits the oxygen in air and water, causing the pollutants to break down over a period ranging from a few minutes to more than a century.
Some chemicals, such as the chlorinated compounds in the haze, cut holes through the ozone before they break down.
Hao said deforestation fires - 80 percent of which occur in tropical areas in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia - send a destructive ripple effect through the world's ecosystems. That ripple threatens human health, air and water quality, the atmosphere and global climate, he said.
The IPCC, which formed in 1988, was established by two governmental bodies, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program.
The panel's role was to assess the best available scientific and socioeconomic information on climate change around the world.
The panel was divided into three main groups of 200 individuals each, with headquarters in Colorado, England and the Netherlands.
Running, a well-known ecologist and climate-change expert at UM, was a lead author for his part of the project, which researched the effects of global warming on North America.
Hao, a soft-spoken man who is lesser known outside the science community, also was a lead author.
His chapter focused on coming up with a methodology to quantify nitrous oxide, methane and other greenhouse gases produced by fires in different ecosystems.
It took Hao a year to compile and synthesize the material into eight pages for the IPCC report.
Hao, 54, a native of Taiwan, received his doctorate from Harvard University and worked for a time in Germany, where he first studied the then-emerging field of fire chemistry. He joined the Forest Service in 1991 and was posted to Missoula.
Since he started working with the IPCC in 1994, Hao has traveled to the Amazon basin and Africa to gather data on deforestation fires.
About 15 colleagues at the Fire Sciences Lab have collaborated on the research over the years.
Their work ranged from crunching numbers to analyzing satellite images to hauling heavy equipment into remote areas to conduct experiments.
Hao said he hopes his research promotes public understanding of how people are contributing to climate change.
But he said he didn't have any solutions for stopping deforestation burning, which is done by both impoverished peasants and wealthy corporations.
He said his role was to provide sound science to help policy-makers find the answers.
“How do we tell them to stop the burning?” he said. “It's part of their life. The people doing it understand the consequences of what they're doing, but the economic reality is they just keep doing it.”
Hao said he felt humbled - and lucky - to share the prize. He deflected attention from himself, instead thanking his colleagues, mentors and family, among others, for supporting his work. He also encouraged more young people to become scientists.
He's currently using satellite imagery to quantify greenhouse gasses from deforestation fires and wildfires in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
As for his share of the $1.5 million Nobel Prize, Hao said it was unimportant.
“I'm not expecting a check in the mail,” he said, smiling. “Raising public awareness about climate change is more important than any award.”
As for the delay in publicity, it isn't exactly clear why Hao's name wasn't in the news along with Running's last month.
The Forest Service initially sent out a press release, but it got lost in the shuffle among the large number of IPCC researchers spread across the world.
Adding to the confusion was the fact that many of those researchers are affiliated with several agencies, universities, companies and other groups.
For example, Hao was among 13 Forest Service researchers who shared in the Nobel Prize, but he also collaborates with NASA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other groups.
Some Forest Service scientists were doing research in remote parts of the globe and didn't learn about their share in the prize until weeks later.
Hao said he heard the news about the prize on the radio last month, but he didn't bother to tell his Missoula colleagues, many of whom didn't know he was an IPCC author.
He said he figured he should wait for the Forest Service to announce it and that such announcements took a long time to make their way through the bureaucracy.
Dave Tippets, a spokesman for the Rocky Mountain Research Station's headquarters in Colorado Springs, said he didn't learn until recently that Hao shared in the prize.
“I scolded him,” Tippets said, chuckling. “I said, ‘Hey, Wei Min, the next time you win the Nobel Prize, let me know, would you?' ”
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