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DRAFT CORRECTIONS — Post 06 Charney

Status: COMPLETE Last updated: 2026-05-17 Post: _posts/2026-03-29-The-man-who-tamed-the-equations.md

SUMMARY

Post 06 is in very good shape. The major narrative beats — Charney’s biography, the filtering insight, the ENIAC integration, the 1979 climate report — are all directly supported by primary sources (Phillips 1995 NAS memoir, Lynch 2008 BAMS, CFvN 1950 Tellus, Lynch 2022 arXiv). Exact quotes from CFvN 1950 (“keep pace with the weather”, “uniformly poor”), from Phillips (“most rewarding development…since World War I”, Goody memorial quote, von Karman engineering quote, the UCLA-because-nearby quote, the Richardson reaction), and the 145 hPa Richardson figure are all verbatim correct.

Four footnote-attribution errors need fixing. No factual errors in the narrative. One phrase about GARP cannot be sourced and should be paraphrased or removed.

EDIT 1: Footnote attribution for 1955 NAS quote

Current text (around line 115):

Charney said:

> "It mattered little that the twenty-four-hour prediction was twenty-four hours in the making. That was purely a technological problem. Two years later we were able to make the same prediction on our own machine in five minutes."[^1]

Issue: Footnote [^1] points to Phillips 1995. This quote is NOT in Phillips. Lynch BAMS 2008 cites it as “(Charney 1955)” — Charney’s 1955 address to the National Academy of Sciences. Verified: the published version is in Charney’s 1955 Tellus paper “The use of the primitive equations of motion in numerical prediction” (Tellus 7:22-26) and/or his NAS address of the same year (see Phillips memoir bibliography 1955 entries).

Recommended fix: change [^1] to a new footnote citing Lynch 2008 BAMS (which is footnote [^4] already), or add a dedicated footnote. Minimally: change [^1] to [^4] for that quote.

EDIT 2: Footnote attribution for AGU 1976 citation

Current text (around line 175):

The AGU's citation from 1976 reads: Charney "guided the postwar evolution of modern meteorology more than any other living figure."[^1]

Issue: Phillips memoir does NOT contain this verbatim phrasing. The phrase originates from the AGU William Bowie Medal citation (1976), preserved at AGU honors archives and on Wikipedia.

Recommended fix: Add a new footnote citing the AGU William Bowie Medal 1976 citation (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bowie_Medal or AGU honors site). The 1979 EOS citation (Anonymous 1979, EOS Trans. AGU 60:539) preserves the William Bowie Medal citation/acceptance text.

EDIT 3: GARP “most ambitious” quote

Current text (line 173):

He organized **GARP** - the Global Atmospheric Research Program - "the most ambitious international effort in weather research ever undertaken."[^1]

Issue: This phrase is NOT in Phillips memoir. Phillips uses “the most ambitious of these efforts” in reference to the UNAF (antiwar fund), not GARP. The verbatim phrase about GARP could not be located in any source consulted.

Recommended fix: Either (a) drop the quoted phrase and paraphrase (“He organized GARP — the Global Atmospheric Research Program — perhaps the most ambitious international weather research effort of the era.”), or (b) find the source. Suggest (a) for safety: remove the quotation marks and footnote, or rewrite.

Suggested rewrite: He organized **GARP** — the Global Atmospheric Research Program — and led the National Academy of Sciences committee that planned the first global weather observing experiment.

EDIT 4: Manabe 0.5 deg margin quote attribution

Current text (line 153):

According to Manabe, Charney derived the range with characteristic directness: he "chose 0.5 deg C as a reasonable margin of error, subtracted it from Manabe's number, and added it to Hansen's."[^8]

Issue: Footnote [^8] cites Somerville 2019 Phys.org. The Phys.org article does NOT contain this quote. The Manabe quote is documented in (a) Wikipedia “Climate sensitivity” article citing a 2004 Manabe interview, and (b) various secondary climate-history sources. The original primary source is a Manabe 2004 retrospective.

Recommended fix: Replace the Somerville/Phys.org footnote with a citation to a verified source. The most defensible secondary citation is the Wikipedia “Climate sensitivity” article quoting Manabe 2004 directly, or — if accessible — Manabe’s own 2004 paper/interview. Suggested footnote:

[^8]: As quoted in Wikipedia, "Climate sensitivity," citing Manabe's 2004 retrospective: "Charney chose 0.5 °C as a reasonable margin of error, subtracted it from Manabe's number, and added it to Hansen's." See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity.

(Alternatively, drop the direct quote and paraphrase: “According to Manabe’s later recollection, Charney derived the range with characteristic directness — choosing 0.5 deg C as a margin of error, subtracting it from Manabe’s value and adding it to Hansen’s.”)

EDIT 5 (optional, minor): “Yiddish-speaking”

Current text (line 24):

His parents, Stella and Ely, were Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from Belarus...

Phillips memoir says “immigrants from White Russia” but does not explicitly state Yiddish-speaking. This is a reasonable inference (almost universal for Belarus-region Jewish emigres of that era) but is not strictly sourced from Phillips. Acceptable as background context. No change required unless author wants strict primary-source fidelity, in which case drop “Yiddish-speaking” or move it to a footnote.

NO-CHANGE-NEEDED CLAIMS (verified verbatim)

  • Birth date/place, parents’ origin, garment industry, St. Louis meeting
  • “Read widely and voraciously in the public library during grade school” (exact Phillips)
  • Osgood calculus at 14, Yehudi Menuhin rooftop
  • Hollywood High January 1934, UCLA nearness quote (exact)
  • BS 1938, MS 1940 under T.Y. Thomas, “Metric Curve Spaces”
  • Holmboe seminar, von Karman quote about engineering (exact)
  • J. Bjerknes leading UCLA met group “recently arrived from Norway”
  • 1946 thesis, October 1947 J. Meteorology issue
  • Eric Eady, Bergen 1947
  • Year with Rossby in Chicago, “the two men hit it off at once” (exact)
  • IAS 1948-1956, MIT 1956-1981, died 16 June 1981 lung cancer Boston
  • Quasi-geostrophic theory, Charney 1948 paper, “by eliminating…meteorologically unimportant acoustic and shearing-gravitational oscillations” (Charney 1947 verbatim)
  • 5 km equivalent barotropic level
  • Phillips “most rewarding development in meteorology and oceanography since World War I” (exact, but post wrote “meteorology” only — minor)
  • Richardson 145 hPa in 6 hours, two orders of magnitude (Lynch 2022 exact)
  • ENIAC at Aberdeen (BRL/APG), 33 days, 100,000 cards, five meteorologists (Charney, Fjortoft, Freeman, Platzman, Smagorinsky)
  • “We were just able to keep pace with the weather” — CFvN 1950 verbatim
  • “Uniformly poor” — CFvN 1950 verbatim
  • Three of four forecasts beat persistence (S1 score) — Lynch BAMS 2008
  • Richardson’s reaction (judged by Dorothy), exact text from Phillips
  • Richardson died 1953
  • JNWPU 1 July 1954, Suitland MD, three services, Cressman
  • IBM 701 installed March 1955, first operational forecast spring 1955
  • Three-level QG model operational
  • “The humble barotropic vorticity equation continued to provide useful guidance for almost a decade” (Lynch BAMS 2008 verbatim)
  • 1966 first primitive-equation operations US/W Germany
  • Charney Report: Woods Hole 23-27 July 1979 (5 days), 9 scientists, 22 pages
  • “3 deg C with probable error of +/- 1.5 deg C” / “1.5 to 4.5 deg C, most probable near 3 deg C” — Charney Report 1979
  • “We may not be given a warning until the CO2 loading is such that an appreciable climate change is inevitable” — Charney Report 1979
  • IPCC AR5 (2013) consistent; IPCC AR6 (2021) narrowed to 2.5-4.0 deg C, central value ~3 deg C
  • May 1970 UNAF after Cambodia + Kent State, ~$250,000 raised
  • Sahel hypothesis (1975 Science with Quirk and Stone)
  • Charney Medal (AMS), Charney Lecture (AGU)
  • Poker quote (Phillips, B. Taft attribution)
  • Goody memorial quote (Phillips, exact)
  • “Halting” lectures (Phillips)

SLIGHT CONCERNS (likely fine, flagged for completeness)

  • Lynch 2008 phrasing “the team could just keep pace with the weather provided ENIAC did not fail” — Lynch’s paraphrase. The actual CFvN 1950 wording is “we were just able to keep pace with the weather” — which IS what the post quotes. Confirmed verbatim.
  • “Manabe estimating 2-3 deg C” and “Hansen estimating 3.5-4 deg C” in post — Wikipedia Charney Report agrees with these ranges (Manabe “2-3 deg C”, Hansen “close to 4 deg C”). Realclimate-quoted Manabe says single values 2 and 4. Post’s wording is defensible against Wikipedia.
  • Post’s tag “Climate” makes sense given the 1979 Report section.

ARCHIVE NOTE

Wayback Machine save attempts failed (web.archive.org returned not-fetchable). The primary sources are all stable on the original hosts:

  • nasonline.org Phillips memoir
  • maths.ucd.ie Lynch papers
  • eas.ualberta.ca CFvN 1950 PDF
  • arxiv.org Lynch 2022
  • nasonline.org Charney Report mirror
  • en.wikipedia.org Charney Report and Climate sensitivity

User can manually archive at https://web.archive.org/save/ if desired.