Joseph Smagorinsky

At 81 years old, Joseph Smagorinsky physical status not available right now. We will update Joseph Smagorinsky's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Joseph, aided by the G. I. Bill, went on to earn his B.S. (1947), M.S. (1948), and Ph.D. (1953) at New York University (NYU). In the middle of his sophomore year at NYU, he entered the Air Force and joined an elite group of cadet recruits, chosen for their talents in mathematics and physics. Those talents led Smagorinsky to be selected for the air force meteorology program. He and other recruits were then sent to Brown University to study mathematics and physics for six months. He was then sent to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to learn dynamical meteorology. His instructor was Ed Lorenz, who later pioneered the mathematical theory of deterministic chaos. During the war Smagorinsky flew in the nose of bombers as a weather observer, making weather forecasts based on visible factors such as the estimated size of waves, and the observed air temperature and wind velocity at the plane's altitude.

Following the war, Smagorinsky concluded his studies. He originally aspired to be a naval architect, but was not admitted to the Webb Institute. He then turned to meteorology as a career and educational focus. As a doctoral student, while serving the remainder of his army commitment, he attended a lecture on weather forecasting conducted by Jule Charney, and asked a series of pointed questions during the question-and-answer session following the talk. Charney, a prominent atmospheric scientist, invited Smagorinsky to the Princeton, NJ Institute for Advanced Study to examine the possible predictability of large-scale motions in the middle troposphere (the lower part of the atmosphere) using the new electronic computer being designed by John von Neumann. In April 1950, Smagorinsky participated in a major milestone of modern meteorology; together with Ragnar Fjørtoft, John Freeman, and George Platzman, he worked with Charney to solve Charney's simplest equations on the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC). His wife Margaret Smagorinsky (née Knoepfel) was also a member of the team that programmed the ENIAC computer, and was the first woman statistician hired by the Weather Bureau. Von Neumann's new Princeton computer had been delayed so arrangements were made with the Army to use its computer at Aberdeen, Maryland. The results were realistic enough to demonstrate that weather prediction by numerical process was a promising prospect. After the ENIAC work, Smagorinsky moved to the Institute for Advanced Study to work with Charney and von Neumann on the development of a radical new approach to weather forecasting that employed the new technology of the computer.

Before the advent of computers in the late 1940s, weather forecasting was very crude. George Platzman of the University of Chicago felt that "academic meteorology in this country is still suffering from the trade-school blues." The American Meteorological Society (AMS) and its leaders, most of whom taught in universities, still aspired to turn meteorology into a professional discipline given the same respect accorded engineering and the other physical sciences. An exceptional mathematician, von Neumann was among the first to see the potential afforded by computers for much faster processing of data and thus more responsive weather forecasting. He was not satisfied with mathematics as an abstract practice. Weather forecasting provided him with a very concrete application of mathematical principles that could exploit the new computer technology. At the Institute for Advanced Study, he used his mathematical knowledge and Smagorinsky worked with Charney to develop a new approach called numerical weather prediction. This approach relied on data collected from weather balloons. The data were then fed into computers and subjected to the laws of physics, enabling forecasts of how turbulence, water, heat, and other factors interacted to produce weather patterns. (Smagorinsky endeared himself to his children by visiting their elementary school classrooms to demonstrate how weather balloons worked.)

In his doctoral dissertation, conducted at NYU under the direction of Bernhard Haurwitz, Smagorinsky developed a new theory for how heat sources and sinks in mid-latitudes, created by the thermal contrast between land and oceans, disturbed the path of the jet stream. This theory provided one of the first applications of Jule Charney's remarkable simplification of the equations of motion for the atmosphere, now known as quasi-geostrophic theory. This work benefited greatly from interactions with Charney at the Institute for Advanced Study. This theory has been elaborated over the years to provide numerous insights into the maintenance of the climate in mid-latitudes and the interaction between the tropics and mid-latitudes.

Academic career

The year GFDL moved to Princeton, Smagorinsky was named a visiting lecturer with the rank of professor in geological and geophysical sciences at the University. He helped develop the Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, a doctoral program in the Department of Geosciences that collaborates closely with the GFDL. Following his retirement as director of the GFDL in 1983, he served as a visiting senior fellow in atmospheric and oceanic sciences at Princeton until 1998. "Dr. Smagorinsky, a major player in the move of the GFDL to Princeton more than 30 years ago, in effect provided Princeton University with a graduate program," said George Philander, a professor of geosciences and director of the Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. "It is because of that program, the official link between the GFDL and Princeton University, that Princeton is an internationally recognized center for weather and climate studies, especially studies related to global warming."

Source

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recognition as one of the ten most significant figures in NOAA’s history, and identification of his general circulation climate model as one of the three most important breakthroughs in meteorology in the last two centuries.
• Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth Science from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 2003, presented to Smagorinsky and his close friend and colleague Norman A. Phillips for "their seminal and pioneering studies" that led to "an understanding of the general circulation of the atmosphere, including transports of heat and moisture that determine the earth's climate."
• Chair, Global Atmospheric Research Program, coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization and the International Council of Scientific Unions
• Buys Ballot Gold Medal, 1974 (awarded once each decade by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences for outstanding advances in the field of meteorology)
• International Meteorological Organization Prize and Gold medal, the highest honor accorded by the World Meteorological Organization, 1974
• The Clarence Leroy Meisinger Award, given to an individual in recognition of research achievement that is, at least in part, aerological in character and concerns the observation, theory, and modeling of atmospheric motions on all scales. The award is given to young, promising atmospheric scientists who have recently shown outstanding ability and are under 40 years of age when nominated. 1967
• Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Gold medal, presented to individuals on the basis of outstanding contributions to the understanding of the structure or behavior of the atmosphere. It represents the highest honor that the American Meteorological Society can bestow upon an atmospheric scientist. 1972
• The Cleveland Abbe Award for Distinguished Service to Atmospheric Sciences by an Individual, presented on the basis of activities that have materially contributed to the progress of the atmospheric sciences or to the application of atmospheric sciences to general, social, economic, or humanitarian welfare. 1980
• Presidential award 1980
• Symons Memorial Gold Medal, Royal Meteorological Society, 1980
• The Scientific Research Society national lecturer from 1983 to 1985
• President, American Meteorological Society 1986
• International Meteorological Organization Prize from the World Meteorological Organization in 1988
• Honorary doctorate, University of Munich
• Gold medal, U. S. Department of Commerce
• Sigma Xi Society
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Member of the Presidential Scientific Advisory Committee Panel on Pollution
• Member of the National Research Council's Committee on Atmospheric Science