Dr. Washington goes to Washington. Photo courtesy Ryan K Morris Photography/National Science & Technology Medals Foundation
Yesterday at the East Room of the White House, President Obama honored the winners of the National Medal of Science, including AMS past president Warren Washington. President Obama noted:
It’s no exaggeration to say that the scientists and innovators in this room have saved lives, improved our health and well-being, helped unleash whole new industries and millions of jobs, transformed the way we work and learn and communicate. And this incredible contribution serves as proof not only of their incredible creativity and skill but of the promise of science itself.
For more on the award, see our post from October 16.
by Robert Fovell, UCLA, and Wen-Wen Tung, Purdue Univ.
Professor Michio Yanai passed away suddenly at his home in Santa Monica on October 13th, at the age of 76. A seminal figure in tropical meteorology, Professor Yanai grew up in Chigasaki, Japan. He received a D. Sc. in geophysics at the University of Tokyo in 1961 and was an assistant professor at the same university from 1965-1970 before being appointed to a full professorship at UCLA in 1970.
Professor Yanai published a 1964 review paper on the formation of tropical cyclones that served as the most comprehensive reference on the topic for more than a decade. Much of his groundbreaking work continues to guide research even today, including his observations of the mixed Rossby-gravity wave (also known as the Yanai wave), his systematic approach of estimating apparent heat sources (Q1) and moisture sinks (Q2) and associating them with the bulk properties of convective systems, and his diagnostic studies of the Asian monsoon, in particular his pioneering works on the impacts of the Tibetan Plateau on the Asian Monsoon. In 1986, the American Meteorological Society honored him with the Charney Award. In 1993, he received the Fujiwara Award from the Meteorological Society of Japan. His UCLA Tropical Meteorology and Climate Newsletter has been an invaluable resource to the community since its founding in 1996.
This year, Professor Yanai was selected by the AMS to be honored at a special symposium dedicated to his life and career at the 2011 annual meeting in Seattle (Thursday, 27 January). Professor Yanai was thrilled by this selection, which certainly helped maintain his passion and energy as his health declined, and was a very enthusiastic contributor as the symposium program took shape. He was scheduled to deliver the closing remarks at the symposium.
The occasion led Professor Yanai to reminisce not only about his life and career but also about the histories and contributions of his colleagues, especially his fellow meteorologists who emerged from post-war Japan. He also recently embarked on a project to document the evolution of the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences program at UCLA, which was still called the Department of Meteorology when he joined in 1970. Professor Yanai was in the midst of collecting oral histories of the department from past and present members of the UCLA family when he passed away. The last UCLA Tropical Meteorology and Climate Newsletter was issued on October 8th.
Although we will greatly miss his presence at the Michio Yanai Symposium, we know he will be there in spirit when we gather to honor his accomplishments, his legacy and his memory. No one who is so fondly remembered can ever truly be lost.
Professor Yanai is survived by his wife, Yoko; two sons, Takashi and Satoshi; four grandchildren, and a sibling, Tetsuo Yanai of Japan. The family requests that memorial donations may be made to the Professor Emeritus Michio Yanai Memorial Fund in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA. E-mail Dawn M. Zelmanowitz ([email protected]) for information. Readers are also encouraged to share their memories of Professor Yanai in the comments to this blog post.
UCAR photo by Carlye Calvin.
AMS Past President Warren Washington, a leader in the development of climate modeling, was one of the ten winners of the National Medal of Science announced Friday by President Obama at the White House. Since 1959 this has been the highest honor bestowed by the nation to its scientists, and very few in the atmospheric, oceanographic, and related sciences have been among the recipients–including Jacob Bjerknes, Roger Revelle, Susan Solomon, Helmut Landsberg, Henry Stommel, Charles Keeling, Verner Suomi, and Wallace Broecker.
In a statement issued by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where he has worked since 1963, Washington says:
I am very pleased to receive this honor, which recognizes not only my work but that of my many colleagues whom I’ve had the pleasure of working with for more than 45 years. Akira Kasahara and Jerry Meehl, at NCAR, contributed significantly to the development of computer climate models, and support from NSF and the Department of Energy enabled us to make research advancements that I hope will contribute to mankind’s ability to sustain this planet.
President Obama remarked today:
The extraordinary accomplishments of these scientists, engineers, and inventors are a testament to American industry and ingenuity….Their achievements have redrawn the frontiers of human knowledge while enhancing American prosperity, and it is my tremendous pleasure to honor them for their important contributions.
Another AMS Past President, Bob Ryan, wrote on his blog,
Warren has been and continues as one of the world’s leading climate researchers of the 20th and now 21st centuries. His contributions to meteorology, science, public understanding, education and opportunity and service to his science are immense. Warren is one of those people whom we cross paths with personally, professionally or both, whom we know have enriched our lives. Someone you look forward to seeing again . . . and again. That’s a Warren Washington.
His scientific leadership, innate diplomacy, as well as the mentorship to future generations of scientists have deeply and profoundly impacted our field.
Ray Boylan, former chair of the AMS Broadcast Board, who died yesterday at age 76, was a Navy enlisted man who found his way into meteorology by a fluke. Maybe that’s why he never lost a homespun attitude toward celebrity and science that we ought to remember. Ray Boylan at his first station after retiring from Navy hurricane hunting.
After training at airman’s prep in Norman, Oklahoma, in 1953, Boylan was casting about for the next assignment when he noticed that the Aerographer’s mate school was in Lakehurst, New Jersey—near home and best of all near his girlfriend.
So it was off to New Jersey for a career in meteorology. The Navy service was his only formal training in weather, and included some 2,000 hours as a hurricane hunter flight meteorologist. First assignment—flying straight into Camille in 1969:
Back in those days the Navy had the low level mission and the Air Force had the high level mission. Whatever the lowest cloud level was, we went in below those so that I could see the sea surface to keep the wind just forward of the left wing. That’s how we navigated in. I remember a fellow at a Rotary meeting who asked,
‘How many times do you hit downdrafts?’
‘Just once.’
Realizing that viewers had a realistic yes/no experience with rain, Boylan resisted using PoPs on the air, according to today’s Charlotte Observer obituary:
“I’d rather say, ‘It’s going to be scattered like fleas on a bulldog’s back – and if you’re close, you’ll get bitten.’ Or, ‘like freckles scattered across a pretty girl’s face.'”
Lamenting the hype of local TV news these days, Boylan told the WeatherBrains on their 19 February 2008 podcast,
One of the things I see now, is that every weather system that approaches a tv market is a storm system. Not every weather system is a storm system, but that vernacular is there.
Sometimes the medium gets in the glow of the medium’s eye. It’s kind of a narcissistic thing. The media looks at itself as absolutely invaluable. And it can be invaluable, but not if the media thinks so.
The work of the on air forecaster is not to impress, but in
Trying to get the forecast as right as you possibly can. Building the trust of the audience so that they’ll forgive even when you are wrong, And there’s no one out there in our business who hasn’t been wrong, and won’t be again, including myself. …If you can build that confidence and trust base, they’ll forgive you some of the small ones if you get the big one.
Speaking of building trust, Lakehurst turned out pretty well for Boylan. Fifty-five years later he would say, “The science and the girl are still with me.”
(Click here to download the audio of the full 20-minute WeatherBrains interview with Boylan.)
Dr. Russell Schneider named as new Storm Prediction Center director. Schneider spent his entire career at the National Weather Service. He began at NCEP’s Environmental Modeling Center before becoming the first science and operations officer at the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center. He has been the science support …branch chief at SPC in Norman, Okla., since 1997. Author and co-author of numerous professional publications, Schneider also served as an associate editor of the American Meteorological Society Journal “Weather and Forecasting” for more than a decade.
In June 2004, BAMS published a brief interview with Russ Schneider by Ashton Robinson-Cook. Schneider recalled that his interest in meteorology was ignited as a youngster–a situation surely familiar to many AMS members. In particular 1965, when he was seven years old, the weather brought two pivotal storms to Chicago: an inch-thick icing in the winter, followed by the Palm Sunday outbreak in which an F4 struck within 10 miles of Schneider’s home.
That was a pretty intense start, which led to a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a long career with the weather service serving the intersection of research and operations. He told Robinson-Cook,
I think the ability to use science to warn people of the threat of severe weather hazards is what my commitment (and many others in atmospheric science) is all about.
Congratulations on taking that attitude to the next step.
