Inventing Atmospheric Science: Bjerknes, Rossby, Wexler, and the Foundations of Modern Meteorology

Inventing Atmospheric Science: Bjerknes, Rossby, Wexler, and the Foundations of Modern Meteorology, James Rodger Fleming, MIT Press, 2016. $31.00 (296 pp.). ISBN 978-0-262-03394-7

James Rodger Fleming of Colby College is well known for his numerous books on the history of meteorology. One of his first was Meteorology in America, 1800–1870 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), which documented the rise of weather science; during the 19th century, the field grew from individuals making backyard observations to weather-forecasting networks spanning continents.

Fleming’s latest book, Inventing Atmospheric Science: Bjerknes, Rossby, Wexler, and the Foundations of Modern Meteorology, is in some ways a continuation of that early work. By examining the lives and work of three prominent meteorologists—Norwegian Vilhelm Bjerknes, Swedish-born American Carl-Gustaf Rossby, and American Harry Wexler—Fleming shows how, over the first half of the 20th century, the enterprise became a world-spanning, full-fledged science. He also shows how the three scientists’ work contributed to the founding of modern forecasting and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the US.

Bjerknes conducted his work from the late-19th to mid-20th centuries and bridged the transformation of weather forecasting from a subjective, intuitive art to an objective science. One of his first accomplishments was to generalize Maxwell’s electromagnetic field equations to fluid-dynamic formulas, a strategy that laid the groundwork for numerical weather prediction. On the practical side, Bjerknes established a weather forecast center in Bergen, Norway, that became a training center in the new methods of polar-front and air-mass analyses. Meteorologists who studied at the Bergen “school” included Francis Reichelderfer, Tor Bergeron, and Rossby.

During the early 1930s, Rossby tried to bring the insights of the Bergen school to the US Weather Bureau (now the National Weather Service). Frustrated by the bureau’s rejection of those new ideas, he carried out dishpan experiments in the bureau’s basement. Those led him to insights about upper-atmospheric circulation and the jet stream, and to the discovery of what are now known as Rossby waves—atmospheric and oceanic waves that result largely from planetary motion. Between his bouts of employment at the bureau, Rossby founded the meteorology departments at MIT and the University of Chicago. He also established a program to train weather forecasters for the US armed services during World War II. Students of those programs included George Platzman, Horace Byers, and Wexler.

By his teacher Rossby’s evaluation, Wexler had his “fingers in too many pies.” He oversaw the birth of numerical weather prediction, studied climatology, evaluated intentional and inadvertent weather modification, and promoted the use of artificial satellites to monitor the weather. His efforts, detailed in Fleming’s new book, helped define the now burgeoning field of atmospheric science.

In addition to the three main subjects, Fleming offers minibiographies of some of their colleagues, including Anne Louise Beck, Jule Charney, and Jerome Namias, who also made contributions in modernizing weather science. Fleming presents segments on the major technological innovations that drove scientific advance as much as scientists did. Rawinsondes (which profile wind velocity and other atmospheric parameters as a function of height), radars, computers, and satellites brought revelations about the structure and dynamics of the atmosphere; the new data required a rethinking of theory, and that in turn led to better forecasting.

In his introduction, Fleming promises his readers that the book will be generally accessible to nonexperts. That isn’t entirely true. Much of his discussion of the developments of the science will be opaque to anyone not familiar with the basics of meteorology. In the first chapter, he references many 19th-century developments in physics and meteorology as if readers were already acquainted with them. It might be best if readers first peruse his Meteorology in America for a proper grounding in the names and evolution of the science prior to the period discussed in this book. Fleming takes the time to define “in the catbird seat” but does not do so for terms such as convection, convergence, and cyclogenesis. Nongeophysicists might want to keep a meteorological glossary handy. We scientists often forget that our jargon is obscure to the general public.

Readers might be disappointed to find that even for the book’s three principals, Fleming does not offer “life in full” biographies. For Bjerknes and Rossby, a lot of text is given over to reciting conferences attended, committees formed, and institutions founded; for Wexler, more details are given about his private life, perhaps because his family supplied Fleming with a treasure trove of personal letters and papers. At the end, we are given a warm, intimate look at Wexler, while poor Bjerknes comes off as a bit of a cold lutefisk.

Inventing Atmospheric Science should certainly be read by those interested in scientific and, in particular, meteorological history and policy. It covers a critical period in the development of the atmospheric sciences and how modern weathercasting came to be.