Meteorologist, oceanographer, Python solvem probler, experimenter, Raspberry Pi tinkerer, geek dad, manager, space enthusiast, ham radio lover, science columnist, ADHDer, synthetic intellect curious, linux admin cosplayer.

Verified Facts: Post 25 (Bjerknes & ENSO)

Status: COMPLETED

Sources Used

  • Wikipedia: Jacob Bjerknes, Vilhelm Bjerknes, Gilbert Walker (physicist), Carl-Gustaf Rossby, Harald Sverdrup, Bjørn Helland-Hansen, Klaus Wyrtki, Jørgen Holmboe, Mark Cane, VAX-11, El Chichón, William Bowie Medal
  • NAS Biographical Memoir of Jacob Bjerknes by Arnt Eliassen (1995) [PDF]
  • Bjerknes 1969 Monthly Weather Review paper [PDF]
  • UCLA Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences History page
  • Klaus Wyrtki publication list (SOEST Hawaii)
  • AMS Past Presidents Directory
  • Mark Cane CV (Columbia/Lamont)

VERIFIED FACTS (CORRECT in post)

Jacob Bjerknes

  • Born Nov 2, 1897 Stockholm. CONFIRMED (Wikipedia, NAS memoir).
  • Died July 7, 1975 Los Angeles, age 77. CONFIRMED.
  • Father: Vilhelm Bjerknes. CONFIRMED.
  • 1919 paper “On the Structure of Moving Cyclones,” published age 21. CONFIRMED (NAS memoir says “written in the fall of 1918 before he was twenty-one”; published 1919).
  • Wife: Hedvig Borthen, married 1928, daughter of Bergen ophthalmologist. CONFIRMED.
  • 1939 American lecture tour (eight months planned). CONFIRMED.
  • Came to UCLA in 1940 to lead meteorology program. CONFIRMED.
  • Trained “more than a thousand” military forecasters during WWII. CONFIRMED (UCLA history page says ~1200).
  • Yale Mintz PhD 1949, second PhD from UCLA Meteorology. CONFIRMED.
  • Retired from UCLA in 1965. (Not explicitly verified, but consistent with sources.)
  • Vilhelm died April 9, 1951. CONFIRMED. Coincidence with April 9, 1940 invasion REAL.

Awards & Roles (per NAS memoir)

  • William Bowie Medal AGU 1945. CONFIRMED.
  • IMO Prize 1959. CONFIRMED.
  • Rossby Research Medal AMS 1960. CONFIRMED.
  • Losey Atmospheric Sciences Award 1963. CONFIRMED.
  • National Medal of Science 1966. CONFIRMED.
  • Bowie Medal: Bjerknes was FIRST non-American by birth to win it (1945; earlier recipients 1939-1944 were all American). CONFIRMED.

Gilbert Walker

  • Sir Gilbert Thomas Walker (1868-1958). CONFIRMED.
  • Cambridge-trained (Trinity College, Senior Wrangler 1889). CONFIRMED.
  • Director General of Observatories India 1904-1924. CONFIRMED.
  • Imperial College London after 1924. CONFIRMED.
  • 1923 paper “Correlation in seasonal variations of weather, VIII.” CONFIRMED.
  • Identified Southern Oscillation. CONFIRMED.
  • Yule-Walker equations: post says “joint with British statistician Udny Yule” - CORRECT (Yule was British).
  • Died November 4, 1958, Coulsdon, Surrey, age 90. CONFIRMED.

Bjerknes papers

  • 1966 Tellus 18(4), 820-829. CONFIRMED.
  • 1969 MWR 97(3), 163-172. CONFIRMED.
  • “Chain reaction” phrasing in 1969 paper. CONFIRMED (appears on a later page of paper, around p.171).
  • Walker Circulation named by Bjerknes in 1969 paper. CONFIRMED (figure caption: “‘Walker Circulation’ over the Pacific entered as suggested in the present article”).

Other figures

  • Klaus Wyrtki: born Feb 7, 1925 Tarnowitz Upper Silesia, Scripps then U of Hawaii (1964). CONFIRMED.
  • Wyrtki 1961 monograph “Physical Oceanography of the Southeast Asian Waters” (NAGA Report Vol 2). CONFIRMED.
  • Wyrtki 1975 paper J. Phys. Oceanogr. 5(4), 572-584. CONFIRMED.
  • Mark Cane PhD MIT 1972-75 under Charney. CONFIRMED.
  • Cane-Zebiak-Dolan 1986 Nature 321, 827-832. CONFIRMED.
  • DEC VAX 11/780 shipped 1977, ~1 MIPS (more accurately ~0.5 MIPS but originally rated 1). MOSTLY CONFIRMED.
  • Adrian Gill 1980 QJRMS 106, 447-462. (Not verified directly, but a well-known reference.)

Norway 1940

  • German invasion April 9, 1940. CONFIRMED.
  • Blücher sunk at Oslofjord. CONFIRMED (general history).

DISPUTED / NEEDS CORRECTION

Major errors

  1. Carl-Gustaf Rossby’s age at death
    • Post says: “died suddenly in Stockholm on August 19, 1957, at sixty-eight”
    • ACTUAL: Rossby was born Dec 28, 1898, died Aug 19, 1957 — age 58, NOT 68.
    • Source: Wikipedia, multiple obituaries.
  2. Carl-Gustaf Rossby’s nationality
    • Post says: “Carl-Gustaf Rossby, Norwegian-American”
    • ACTUAL: Rossby was Swedish-American (born Stockholm; became US citizen 1938).
    • Source: Wikipedia, multiple sources.
  3. Bjørn Helland-Hansen’s death date and age
    • Post says: “died earlier in the year, on April 22, 1957, at eighty”
    • ACTUAL: Helland-Hansen born Oct 16, 1877, died September 7, 1957, in Bergen — age 79, NOT April 22 at age 80.
    • This also breaks post’s narrative that he “died earlier in the year.” He actually died LATER than both Rossby (Aug 19) and Sverdrup (Aug 21).
    • The “three Norwegians… dead within four months” claim becomes wrong (it should be “within about three weeks, all in August-September 1957”).
    • Source: Wikipedia, Prabook, multiple sources.
  4. Jacob Bjerknes “president of the American Meteorological Society in 1959” — FALSE
    • Post says: “He served as president of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics from 1948 to 1951 and of the American Meteorological Society in 1959.”
    • ACTUAL: According to AMS Past Presidents Directory:
      • 1958-59: Sverre Petterssen (NOT Bjerknes)
      • 1960-61: Thomas F. Malone
      • 1962-63: Morris Neiburger
    • Jacob Bjerknes was NEVER AMS president. He was elected Honorary Member and Fellow of AMS in 1966.
    • Source: AMS official Past Presidents Directory.
  5. Jacob Bjerknes “president of the IUGG 1948-1951” — partly wrong
    • Post says: “president of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics from 1948 to 1951”
    • ACTUAL per NAS memoir: He was “President, Meteorological Association, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, 1948-51” — i.e. president of IAMAS (now called the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences) WITHIN IUGG, NOT of IUGG itself.
  6. UCLA Meteorology Department founding date
    • Post says: “He founded, at UCLA, the first American department of meteorology at a civilian university” and “The UCLA Meteorology Department that Jacob Bjerknes founded in 1940”
    • ACTUAL per NAS memoir: “In 1940 he joined the faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles as professor of meteorology and head of the Section of Meteorology in the Department of Physics. … In 1945 a new Department of Meteorology was established at the University of California at Los Angeles, with Jack Bjerknes as chairman.”
    • The Meteorology Department was established in 1945, not 1940. Bjerknes headed a meteorology section of the Physics Department from 1940.
    • UCLA history page also says “department was founded in 1940 by J. Bjerknes, J. Holmboe, and J. Kaplan” — there’s source ambiguity. The 1940 founding is sometimes called the “Section” (which became the Department in 1945). Post could clarify this.
    • Post also omits Joseph Kaplan as a co-founder.
  7. Mark Cane’s move to Lamont-Doherty
    • Post says: “Mark Cane had come to Lamont in 1981 from MIT”
    • ACTUAL per Cane’s CV: He was Assistant/Associate Professor at MIT 1979-1984. He joined Lamont-Doherty as Sr. Research Scientist in 1984, not 1981.
    • Source: Mark Cane CV (Columbia Applied Physics).
  8. Holmboe-Eady analysis attribution
    • Post says: “Holmboe’s 1945 paper on baroclinic instability (known to every graduate student as the Eady-Holmboe analysis)”
    • ACTUAL: Baroclinic instability is canonically attributed to Charney (1947) and Eady (1949) — not “Eady-Holmboe.” Holmboe’s most famous instability work is on stratified shear flow (Holmboe instability, 1962). The Bjerknes-Holmboe 1944 paper “On the theory of cyclones” exists, but the “Eady-Holmboe” attribution as a standard textbook label is not correct. It was Charney who, as Bjerknes-Holmboe’s first doctoral student (PhD UCLA 1946), produced “the first mathematical solution describing growing waves on a baroclinic current” per the NAS memoir.

Minor issues / ambiguities

  1. Vilhelm Bjerknes Leipzig date
    • Post says 1913. NAS memoir confirms 1913. (Wikipedia table shows 1912 — slight discrepancy in sources.) Post is OK on this.
  2. Wyrtki nationality “German-American”
    • Post: “German-American oceanographer Klaus Wyrtki”
    • Wyrtki was born in Tarnowitz, Upper Silesia (then part of Germany, now Poland). Wikipedia describes him as American. Post’s “German-American” is defensible historically.
  3. El Chichon eruption dates
    • Post says “March 28 and April 4, 1982.”
    • The eruption sequence BEGAN March 28 at 23:32 local; major Plinian eruptions were March 29, April 3, April 4.
    • Post’s framing is acceptable as a date range, but could be more precise.
  4. Vilhelm Bjerknes wife/Jacob’s grandmother
    • Per NAS: Vilhelm married Honoria Sophia Bonnevie. So Jacob’s mother was Honoria, daughter of Jacob Aall Bonnevie. Post mentions this implicitly through Jacob’s full name “Jacob Aall Bonnevie Bjerknes.” OK.
  5. “Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences” name
    • The UCLA atmos.ucla.edu history page calls it “Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences” now. Post mentions UCLA Meteorology — that was its historical name. OK.

Items NOT verified due to research budget limits

  • Specific page number 171 for “chain reaction” quote (confirmed text exists in the paper, location consistent with later pages of 163-172).
  • Exact figure of “1200 meteorologists trained” — UCLA history page says 1200; post says “more than a thousand” — consistent.
  • Whether Jerome Namias was an early Bjerknes student.
  • Whether Akio Arakawa was hired by Mintz (separate UCLA history; cross-referenced via the previous post).
  • Exact $8 billion damage figure for 1982-83 El Nino (commonly cited).
  • TAO array details, Stan Hayes/Larry McPhaden roles.
  • Klaus Wyrtki worked with German-Pacific connections.
  • Jacob Bjerknes visit to Norway in 1947.