Harry Wexler

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Harry Wexler (born March 15, 1911 in Fall River (Massachusetts) , † August 11, 1962 in Woods Hole (Massachusetts) ) was an American meteorologist who is considered the father of the weather satellites.

Wexler studied at Harvard University from 1929 and joined the US Weather Bureau as a student in 1934, to which he was a member until his death only interrupted by his service as a military meteorologist in the Second World War (1942 to 1946) with the US Air Force. Under Francis Reichelderfer (1895-1983), who headed the Weather Bureau from 1938, modern methods of weather forecasting were turned to, especially the then still controversial theory of weather fronts of the Norwegian meteorological school in Bergen . Reichelderfer had already become a supporter of this theory as a meteorologist with the US Navy and pursued it at the Weather Bureau with the help of young scientifically trained meteorologists, including Wexler, who had received his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1939 .

On September 14, 1944, Wexler became the first scientist to fly into a hurricane to collect data on an airplane (a Douglas A-20 bomber) . The hurricane came from the Bahamas and was en route to New England when Wexler and colleagues flew into the eye of the hurricane over Chesapeake Bay from Washington . They were interviewed by Time Magazine after the flight. During the flight he spotted strong updrafts in the eye of the storm.

He was the driving force behind the development of the first weather satellite TIROS -1, which was launched in 1960.

In 1958 he was chief scientist of the US mission to Antarctica for the International Geophysical Year (IGJ). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he advocated global cooperation in weather observation with satellites, including with the Soviet Union. Wexler planned global CO 2 measurements and, as part of the IGJ, supported the establishment of the first permanent measuring station on Mauna Loa , Hawaii , by Charles David Keeling .

Shortly before his death, he pursued (unpublished) research on the harmful effects of halogen compounds on the ozone layer , which was only taken up again a decade later (by Paul Crutzen , Sherwood Rowland , Mario J. Molina , who later received the Nobel Prize for this) ). In 1958 he warned that nuclear weapons explosions in the Arctic could trigger a new ice age, and in the late 1950s and early 1960s he warned in general against overly optimistic notions of large-scale artificial weather changes , which were then given the advances in satellite meteorology and numerical weather simulation emerged, the long-term consequences of which he considered incalculable and the risk of irreparable damage to be too high.

He died of a heart attack while on vacation in Woods Hole.

The moon crater Wexler and Mount Wexler in Antarctica are named in his honor.

In 1956, Wexler was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . He received the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal posthumously in 1963 .

literature

  • Issues 10 through 12 of the Monthly Weather Review, Volume 91, 1963 are dedicated to him.

Fonts

  • The circulation of the atmosphere, Scientific American, September 1955

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ Daniel C. Harris: Charles David Keeling and the Story of Atmospheric CO2 Measurements . In: Analytical Chemistry . June 2010, doi : 10.1021 / ac1001492 .
  2. ↑ James Rodger Fleming, Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control, Columbia University Press, 2011, pp. 221f
  3. ↑ Published by Walter Sullivan in the New York Times, November 2, 1958
personal data
SURNAME Wexler, Harry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American meteorologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Fall River, Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH August 11, 1962
Place of death Woods Hole, Massachusetts