Jule Gregory Charney

Jule Gregory Charney

Jule Gregory Charney (born January 1, 1917 in San Francisco , † June 16, 1981 ) was an American meteorologist. He was the child of Yiddish- speaking Russian Jews who both worked in the clothing industry. At UCLA he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1938 , his “Master of Arts” in 1940 and his Ph.D. in 1946. in meteorology .

Live and act

Charney was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton , New Jersey , from 1948 to 1956 . His supervisor, John von Neumann, was working on the development of an electronic computer. Charney was the director of Theoretical Meteorology. His group developed a successful mathematical model of the atmosphere and showed that a numerical weather forecast was both feasible (creating the weather report on the ENIAC computer took 24 hours) and practicable (with John von Neumann's computer program creating the weather report took 5 minutes). Charney helped set up a numerical weather report creation department for the US National Weather Service in 1954. In 1957 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1964 to the National Academy of Sciences .

Charney developed an equation, the Quasi-Geostrophic Vorticity Equation , which describes the large-scale movements of planet-wide currents, and thus made an important contribution to improving the quality of weather forecasts. He provided the first convincing explanations of the development mechanisms of cyclones in middle latitudes in the form of the theory of baroclinic instability.

Under his chairmanship, the National Academy of Sciences prepared a study in 1979 to assess the relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and the resulting global warming , which is also known as the Charney Report for this reason .

In 1974 he was John von Neumann Lecturer . In 1976 he was honored with the William Bowie Medal , the American Geophysical Union's highest award . The American Meteorological Society presents the Jule G. Charney Award in his honor .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Charney Report 1979 ( Memento of the original from December 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 298 kB) 

Web links

• The National Academies Press Biographical Memories: Jule Gregory Charney (PDF)
• The Quasi-Geostrophic Vorticity Equation