Paul Julian (meteorologist)
| Paul R. Julian | |
|---|---|
| Born | Paul Rowland Julian October 12, 1929 La Porte, Indiana |
| Citizenship | American |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Meteorology |
| Institutions | National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), 1962-1987 |
| Alma mater | Pennsylvania State University |
| Thesis | (1960) |
| Doctoral advisor | Hans A. Panofsky |
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.
Julian was born on October 12, 1929, and graduated from La Porte High School in 1947. He received an undergraduate physics degree from DePauw University in 1951, and a PhD in Meteorology from Pennsylvania State University.
Julian joined the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), an early program of the National Science Foundation, as a staff scientist in 1962, two years into NCAR's existence There, he was a member of the Climate Analysis Section (CAS) in the CGD (Climate and Global Dynamics) area. Julian left NCAR circa 1987.
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", which became the basis of the accepted Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO), a theory that remains in teaching and practice in climate research. 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. (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. Both of these two atmospheric scientists continued research on the MJO phenomenon throughout their careers, and it has continued to be broadly referenced and studied into the new millennium.
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