Joanne Malkus Simpson

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Joanne M. Simpson in the photo study of clouds in their laboratory mid- 1950s years

Joanne Malkus Simpson (birth name: Joanne Gerould ; born March 23, 1923 in Boston , Massachusetts , † March 4, 2010 in Washington, DC ) was an American meteorologist and was the first woman in the world to receive a doctorate in meteorology . She also developed the first scientific model of clouds and discovered what causes hurricanes and atmospheric winds to swirl in the tropics .

biography

Studies and first scientific work

Her interest in clouds arose during a sailing course and while training to be a pilot . After attending school, she studied meteorology at the University of Chicago at the chair of Carl-Gustaf Rossby . After completing her studies with a Master of Science (M.Sc.), she looked for a doctoral supervisor , but was turned away as a woman. Therefore, she initially took up a position as a teacher at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), where she met the German immigrant Herbert Riehl , who worked there as a lecturer on tropical storm research . Riehl took on the role as a PhD supervisor so that she could begin researching clouds at the University of Chicago.

At the time, clouds were considered the result, not the cause, of weather . She herself found clouds fascinating, however, and Professor Rossby informed her that no one else was interested in the subject, so it was a good subject "for a little girl to study."

After becoming the first woman in the world to study meteorology with a dissertation on the subject of Certain features of undisturbed and disturbed weather in the trade-wind region in 1949 , she and Riehl wrote some basic specialist articles on hurricanes and tropical meteorology. She also became an Assistant Professor of Physics at the Illinois Institute of Technology . In 1951 she became a research meteorologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts , where she constructed the first mathematical models of clouds with the help of a slide rule . To confirm their work, however, it was necessary to fly into the very large cloud fields near the equator . The US Navy lent the Institute an old maritime reconnaissance aircraft type Consolidated PBY , equipped with scientific instruments. However, the then director of the institute refused to allow women to undertake such field studies , whereupon the naval officer responsible for the aircraft replied: "No Joanne, no airplane", so that she finally flew (airplane = airplane, seaplane = flying boat) .

In the following years she was with the support of a Guggenheim scholarship in the United Kingdom and at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Animated, shaped and well-read in tropical meteorology, she drew attention to herself in the 1950s when she and Herbert Riehl explained how the atmosphere moves heat and moisture from the tropics to higher geographic latitudes . This hypothesis , called the Hot Tower , supported by their model of cumulus clouds, helped explain how the trade winds blow and how hurricanes hold the heat that augment them.

She was also a consultant to the National Hurricane Research Project (NHRP) . As part of the NHRP's Stormfury project , it flew over cloud fields in 1963 and emitted flares in the clouds that spread silver iodide . The clouds behaved as she had predicted. In an article she later reported on this event as follows:

“And a riot broke out. I was totally ignorant of the magnitude of the emotions and hostility that were directed against everything that had something to do with hailstones . ”(“ […] And a furor broke loose. I was totally unaware of the level of emotion and hostility that was directed against anything that had to do with cloud seeding. ")

Shortly thereafter, she married the director of the NHRP Robert H. Simpson and was married to him for 37 years. Between 1965 and 1974, she herself was director of the Experimental Meteorological Laboratory in Coral Gables , which was incorporated into the newly founded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 1970 . Although she had not lost her faith in the scientific possibilities of hail flying, she said in 1999 that money spent on the Stormfury project would have been better used for home renovations and tightening building codes in hurricane-hit areas.

Chief Meteorologist at Goddard Space Flight Center

In 1974 she began teaching at the University of Virginia before becoming head of the heavy storms section of the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1979, where she was chief meteorologist until the end of her professional career stayed.

She received her most important professional appointment at the end of her long career, when NASA entrusted her in 1986 with the direction of the scientific study of the proposed mission to measure tropical rainfall. The joint mission with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency was key to learning how hurricanes begin in the Atlantic Ocean , how dust and smoke can dramatically affect rainfall, and how to estimate latent heat emitted by tropical cloud systems . She led unique weather modification experiments of an international weather satellite project to measure tropical rainfall over the oceans and continued this in order to prove significant influences.

Even after retiring from active professional life, she dealt with scientific questions and sparked a controversy in 2008 when she expressed her skepticism about some fundamental doubts in the discussion about global warming in a technical article. While they called for better data and more rigorous definitions, they urged the population to the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to respond "because if we do not, the emissions of greenhouse gases reduced, and the climate models are correct, the Earth, as we know it can no longer be maintained in this century . But as a scientist I remain skeptical. "

Appreciations and awards

Greg Holland , Director of the Earth System Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, paid tribute to them with the words:

“There is no doubt that there has never been a more capable woman in meteorology, and she is also one of the five best meteorologists in history, regardless of gender.” (“There is zero doubt that there has never been a more capable woman in meteorology, and she would also be in the top five of all meteorologists in history, no matter the gender ”).

She also nurtured two generations of high-ranking scientists, especially women, and was named one of the ten most exemplary women in 1998 by the Ms. Foundation for Women .

In 1983 , Joanne Malkus Simpson, who was also the first female president of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), was awarded the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal , the AMS's highest award for atmospheric sciences, for her services. She was also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and in 2002 became the first woman to receive the prestigious International Meteorological Organization Prize of the World Meteorological Organization .

Publications

In addition, she published numerous publications and specialist articles. Her most important works include:

  • Observational studies of convection. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 1949.
  • The flow of a stable atmosphere over a heated island. Illinois Institute of Technology, Dept. of Physics 1951.
  • Recent advances in the study of convective clouds and their interaction with the environment. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 1951.
  • with Herbert Riehl: On the heat balance and maintenance of circulation in the trades. 1957
  • On the dynamics and energy transformation in steady-state hurricanes. US Weather Bureau 1959.
  • The air and sea in interaction. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 1960.
  • A seeding experiment in cumulus dynamics. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 1964.
  • with Robert H. Simpson: Experiments in Hurricane Modification. In: Scientific American. Issue 211 (1964)
  • Morphology of Precipitation Clouds And Cloud Systems. In: Helmut K. Weickmann: Physics of precipitation: proceedings. 1969, ISBN 0-87590-005-4 , p. 31 ff.
  • with Claude Ronne: Cloud Distributions over the Tropical Oceans in Relation to Large-Scale Flow Patterns. In: Helmut K. Weickmann: Physics of precipitation: proceedings. 1969, ISBN 0-87590-005-4 , p. 45 ff.
  • with Herbert Riehl: Tropical Whole Sky Code. In: Helmut K. Weickmann: Physics of precipitation: proceedings. 1969, ISBN 0-87590-005-4 , p. 56 ff.
  • On the structure of trade-wind air below cloud. 1998.

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Keeping her head in the clouds. on: USA TODAY. April 13, 2010.
  2. ^ JS Malkus: Certain Features of Undisturbed and Disturbed Weather in the Trade-wind Region . Thesis (Ph.D.) (Dissertation). University of Chicago, Department of Meteorology., 1949, pp. 108 ( Google Books ).
  3. ↑ A "HOT TOWER" ABOVE THE EYE CAN MAKE HURRICANES STRONGER. NASA homepage January 12, 2004.
  4. ^ Joanne S. Malkus, Claude Ronne, Margaret Chaffee: Cloud Patterns in Hurricane Daisy, 1958. In: WILEY February 1961.
  5. ^ Joanne S. Malkus, Herbert Riehl: Cloud structure and distributions over the tropical Pacific Ocean. In: WILEY, August 1964.
  6. ↑ Slowing of the Gulf Stream. On: LIFE. November 14, 1960, p. 89.
  7. ↑ Chris Landsea: NOOA Hurricane Research Division: Project STORMFURY
  8. ↑ Has there ever been an attempt or experiment to reduce the strength of a hurricane?
  9. ^ Anne Marie Helmenstine: What Was Project Stormfury? Can Cloud Seeding Dissipate Hurricanes?
  10. ↑ Project STORMFURY attempted to weaken hurricanes in the 1960s and 70s. on: USA TODAY. April 18, 2006.
  11. ^ Robert H. Simpson, Richard A. Anthes, Michael Garstang: Hurricane !: coping with disaster: progress and challenges since Galveston, 1900. 2003, ISBN 0-87590-297-9 .
  12. ^ Goddard Scientist Honored by the World Meteorological Organization. ( Memento of March 16, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), NASA Earth Observatory homepage, November 25, 2002.
  13. ↑ Publications by Joanne Malkus Simpson (Amazon)
  14. ↑ MC-37: Joanne Malkus Simpson papers ( Memento from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ^ Helmut K. Weickmann: Physics of precipitation: proceedings. 1969, ISBN 0-87590-005-4 .
  16. ^ Scientific American
personal data
SURNAME Simpson, Joanne Malkus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gerould, Joanne (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American meteorologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston
DATE OF DEATH March 4, 2010
Place of death Washington, DC