Paul Julian (meteorologist)

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Paul R. Julian
Born
Paul Rowland Julian

(1929-10-12) October 12, 1929 (age 94)
NationalityAmerican
CitizenshipAmerican
Alma materPennsylvania State University[1]
Scientific career
FieldsMeteorology
InstitutionsNational Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), 1962-1987
Thesis (1960[1])
Doctoral advisorHans A. Panofsky[1]

Paul Rowland Julian (born October 12, 1929), a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, is an American meteorologist who served as a longtime staff scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), was co-author with Roland Madden of the study establishing the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO), and contributed to the international, multi-institutional Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP), Tropical Wind, Energy Conversion, and Reference Level Experiment (TWERLE), and Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere (TOGA) meteorology research programs. The MJO meteorologic phenomenon he co-discovered is the largest element of the intraseasonal variability in the tropical atmosphere, a traveling pattern arising from large-scale coupling between atmospheric circulation and tropical deep convection. Description of the MJO remains an important contribution to climate research with relevance to modern short- and long-term weather and climate modeling.

Early life and education[edit]

Julian was born on October 12, 1929,[2] and graduated from La Porte High School in 1947.[3] He received an undergraduate physics degree from DePauw University in 1951,[4] and a PhD in meteorology from Pennsylvania State University.[1]

Career[edit]

Employment by the NCAR[edit]

Julian joined the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR),[5] an early program of the National Science Foundation, as a staff scientist in 1962, two years into NCAR's existence[6] There, he was a member of the Climate Analysis Section (CAS) in the CGD (Climate and Global Dynamics) area.[5] Julian left NCAR circa 1987.[5]

Discovery of the Madden-Julian Oscillation[edit]

Julian and Roland A. Madden co-authored a 1971 research publication entitled "Detection of a 40-50 day oscillation in the zonal wind in the tropical Pacific",[7] which became the basis of the accepted Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO), a theory that remains in teaching and practice in climate research.[8][9] The MJO is the largest element of intraseasonal variability of the atmosphere in the tropics; it is a traveling pattern arising from large-scale coupling between atmospheric circulation and tropical deep convection.[9] (The El Niño–Southern Oscillation is a related phenomenon, but a standing pattern.) The ability to identify and forecast the MJO "is of considerable importance" in the ability of meteorologists to predict short-term variability in climate, and to perform long-term predictions of tropical and subtropical weather based on modeling.[8] Both of these two atmospheric scientists continued research on the MJO phenomenon throughout their careers,[10] and it has continued to be broadly referenced and studied into the new millennium.[9]

Other career highlights[edit]

In addition to continuing work on the MJO, Julian performed oceanic meteorological work at Ascension Island in the equatorial waters of the South Atlantic Ocean and at Kanton Island of the Phoenix Islands, in the Republic of Kiribati.[citation needed]

Julian also contributed to two broad, international, multi-institutional meteorology research studies (still accessible at the NCAR research consortium):

  • Global Atmospheric Research Program records, (GARP, 1966–1979),[5][11] and
  • Tropical Wind, Energy Conversion, and Reference Level Experiment records (TWERLE, 1969–1978),[5][12]

in addition to NCAR's Atmospheric Technology Division records (ATD, 1964- 2002), and his personal research papers (1962-1978).[13][14]

Julian worked concurrently and later from the Mathematics Department at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he continued effort associated with the Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP), e.g., serving on the workshop organizing committee for the First GARP Global Experiment (FGGE) and in other atmospheric research related activities.[15][16] In 1998, Julian and collaborators contributed to an important international review of the decade-long Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere (TOGA) observing system (>400 citations as of May 2014).[17]

As of 2014, Julian continues in the position of longstanding active Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS).[18]

Personal life[edit]

Julian is retired and has pursued various activities, including a genealogic study of families with his surname, which was published in 2004.[19]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d Hart, RE; Cossuth, JH (2013). "A Family Tree of Tropical Meteorology's Academic Community and its Proposed Expansion". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 94 (12): 1837–1848. Bibcode:2013BAMS...94.1837H. doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00110.1. S2CID 119839682. See also [1]
  2. ^ U.S. Public Records Index, Volume 1 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010, accessed 27 May 2014
  3. ^ See "Paul Julian," p. 25, in "El-PE", 1947, La Porte High School yearbook, La Porte, In.:LPHS Senior Class of 1947; see [2], accessed 27 May 2014.
  4. ^ "Historical List of Majors: DePauw University Physics majors and Pre-Engineering students § 1951". Depauw University. 2014. Retrieved 22 May 2014.
  5. ^ a b c d e Colleen M. McCorkell, 2010, "Julian, Paul Rowland (1929-)", National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Archives, see [3] Archived 2014-08-10 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 22 May 2014.
  6. ^ National Center for Atmospheric Research, 2014, "About NCAR: NCAR History," see [4] Archived 2011-11-24 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 22 May 2014.
  7. ^ RA Madden & PR Julian, 1971, "Detection of a 40-50 day oscillation in the zonal wind in the tropical Pacific." J. Atmos. Sci., 28, 702-708. See [5], accessed 22 May 2014.
  8. ^ a b John E. Oliver, 2005, The Encyclopedia of World Climatology (Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series), Berlin:Springer, p. 476, ISBN 1402032641. See [6], accessed 3 June 2014.
  9. ^ a b c Chidong Zhang, 2005, "Madden-Julian Oscillation", Rev. Geophysics, 43:RG2003, 1-36. See [7] Archived 2015-07-24 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 22 May 2015.
  10. ^ RA Madden & PR Julian, 1994, "Observations of the 40-50 day tropical oscillation: A review," Mon. Wea. Rev., 122, 814-837.
  11. ^ NCAR, 2014, "Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP) Records, 1966-1979", National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Archives, see [8] Archived 2014-08-08 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 22 May 2014.
  12. ^ NCAR, 2014, "Tropical Wind, Energy Conversion, and Reference Level Experiment (TWERLE) Records, 1969-1978", National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Archives, see [9], accessed 22 May 2014.
  13. ^ NCAR, 2014, "Atmospheric Technology Division (ATD) Records, 1964- 2002", National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Archives, see [10], accessed 22 May 2014.
  14. ^ Colleen M. McCorkell, 2010, "Paul R. Julian Papers, 1962-1978", National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Archives, see [11], accessed 22 May 2014.
  15. ^ E.g., FGGE Advisory Panel, 1984, Proceedings of the First National Workshop on the Global Weather Experiment: Current Achievements and Future Directions," Vol. 1, Woods Hole, Mass., 9–20 July 1984, Washington, D.C.:National Academy Press, p. iii (PDF p. 6). See [12], accessed 22 May 2014.
  16. ^ E.g., FGGE Advisory Panel, 1984, Proceedings of the First National Workshop on the Global Weather Experiment: Current Achievements and Future Directions," Vol. 2, Part 2, Woods Hole, Mass., 9–20 July 1984, Washington, D.C.:National Academy Press, p. 806 (PDF p. 409). See [13], accessed 22 May 2014.
  17. ^ MJ McPhaden, AJ Busalacchi, R Cheney, J-R Donguy, KS Gages, D Halpern, Ming Ji, Paul Julian, G Meyers, GT Mitchurn, PP Niiler, Joel Picaut, RW Reynolds, N Smith & K Takeuchi, 1998, "The Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere observing system: A decade of progress," J. Geophys. Res. 103(C7):14,169-14,240, DOI: 10.1029/97JC02906. See [14] and [15] Archived 2014-06-05 at archive.today, accessed 22 May 2014.
  18. ^ AMS, 2014, "About AMS: AMS Organization and Administration: List of Fellows (Current as of May 20, 2014)", see [16], accessed 22 May 2014.
  19. ^ PR Julian, 2004, "Sorting out the early Julian/Juliens: A history of the 18th and early 19th century founding families with the surnames Julian, Julien, and St. Julien, Baltimore, Md.: Gateway Press/Otter Bay Books. 308 pp.

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