John M. Wallace, Autobiographical Notes
Boyhood
Dating back to the time I learned how to read I was interested in science but the area of emphasis shifted with time. First it was geography: the shapes and populations of the continents, the countries and the 48 states, the heights of mountain ranges, the remarkable spatial contrasts in climate. My fascination with geography has never faded. Earlier this month on our return from India, my wife and I flew from Dubai to Seattle, passing directly over the North Pole. As the 14 hours passed, I watched the sun dip below the western horizon to the left of the plane and then rise in the east, still to the left of the plane, as we passed over Iran, Novaya Zemlaya, the Arctic pack ice and the Canadian archipelago. My wife watched several movies while hour after hour I watched geography through the camera mounted on the bottom of the aircraft.
For a while around age 8 my interest drifted into astronomy. One of my most vivid early memories of science was visiting the Museum of Natural History in New York City with my Aunt Mary. I remember spending a long time viewing the magnificent dioramas depicting the animals and plants that lived on Earth during the ice ages. But for me the highlight of the visit was watching the program in the Hayden Planetarium that culminated in a graphic depiction of an asteroid colliding with the Earth to the driving rhythm of Edward Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King”. I think poor Aunt Mary had to sit through the whole program three times before she got me to agree that it was time to go home.
Seeing the telescope photos and the various artist’s representations of the planets stimulated an early, misguided foray into the field of image processing. Instead of speculating about whether there were canals on Mars, I wondered why the astronomers couldn’t just photograph Mars using their best telescopes, enlarge the photos, then photograph small pieces of those enlarged photos, enlarge those, etc. until the surface of Mars was revealed in exquisite detail. It seemed so obvious to me: why didn’t they just do it? It wasn’t until a few years later, when I had my own equipment for developing and enlarging photos, that I came face to face with the limitations of resolution. With the advent of digital photography those limits have been beaten back, year by year. Nowadays, when I view our planet using Google Earth, it seems as if my childhood fantasy is becoming a reality.
By the time I was 10 years of age (1950), living in Springfield, Massachusetts, I had become a weather buff. I remember one evening when I was glued to the window in our living room, one eye following the slanting path of the windblown raindrops passing beneath the street light and the other on the thermometer, awaiting the passage of a sharp cold front. When the front finally came through, the temperature dropped so rapidly that our mercury thermometer couldn’t keep up with it and the rain changed to snow within an hour. When I wasn’t watching the weather I listened faithfully to the weather forecasts on the radio. I can still remember the excited voice of Don Kent (a.k.a. “The Weather Bee”) on WBZ from Boston, whose “day job” was selling rugs, but whose love of weather (and storms in particular) was nothing short of infectious. Another WBZ radio voice from that era was that of Richard J Reed, who was earning a few extra dollars calling in his weather forecasts from his home under the pseudonym “Don Dixon”, while he was working as a research associate at MIT.
My youth was punctuated with memorable weather events. During January and February, 1947, the accumulation of snow at our house in Holliston, Massachusetts, was well over my head. Later that year the sky was lit up night after night by nearby wildfires. During the great storm of November 1950, my family was spending Thanksgiving at my grandparents’ farm in Northern New Jersey. I remember trees snapping and portable chicken houses being lifted into the air by the wind outside, while buckets of rain were falling in through the holes that had been cut for the light fixtures in the kitchen ceiling. But having my grandparent’s farmhouse battered and flooded wasn’t enough excitement for me: I was jealous of people living in West Virginia, who had the additional experience of being buried in waist-deep snow. The following year I remember recording in my daily weather log the seemingly unending pall of smoke from the Canadian wildfires, and wondering if I would ever see clean blue sky again. On June 9, 1953, the ragged black skirt of the supercell that spawned the Worcester tornado passed harmlessly over our house in Westfield 60 miles to the west. During the passage of Hurricane Diane in 1955 I recorded 15 inches of rain in three days in my home-made rain gauge in our back yard, enough to transform some downtown streets into canals.
Although I grew up during the mid-century “hiatus” in global warming, the prevailing view at the time was based on what had transpired over the previous generation: i.e., that New England winters were not nearly as severe as they used to be a generation ago. As a connoisseur of record breaking snowstorms and cold waves, I remember being heartened by an article that appeared in the magazine section of the Sunday newspaper—a nicely written and illustrated explanation the Ewing and Donn hypothesis. Reading this newspaper account gave me hope that the warming we were witnessing would culminate in the melting of the Arctic sea ice, and that ultimately lead to the dawn of a new ice age, perhaps not within my lifetime, but soon enough to reinvigorate New England winters for the benefit of future generations. The notion of climate as a dynamical entity capable of varying even in the absence of forcing by the sun was new to me and I was intrigued with it. My school friends tolerated, but didn’t share, my interest in such things.
As an 8th grader in 1954 I was invited to write an essay on the topic “What the American Flag Means to Me” in a contest sponsored by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). As one of the prizewinners I was invited to dinner at the local DAR chapter. After the prizes were awarded, the highlight of the evening—billed as a special (surprise) treat—was an advance showing of a short documentary film of the recent test of the hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll. This extraordinary event has affected my life in several different ways: (1) to this day I live in the shadow of the fear of of nuclear war; (2) in support of further nuclear weapons tests in this series, the United States Air Force would soon be establishing a network of radiosonde stations that would provide data that I would be privileged to use in my research; and (3) in the years ahead, I would spend many hours trying to disabuse my father and other relatives and friends of the notion that the latest extreme weather event was a consequence of these nuclear weapons tests. Years later, I took a similar position with respect to that attribution of severe weather events to human-induced greenhouse warming.
As I moved on to high school I graduated from viewing weather maps in the newspaper to subscribing to the series of daily surface 500 mbar height charts published by the US Weather Bureau. I scoured the Westfield Public Library for books on meteorology and was surprised and delighted to find advanced textbooks: Weather Analysis and Forecasting by Sverre Petterssen and Basic Principles of Weather Forecasting by Victor P Starr. My delight evaporated when I discovered that they both contained numerous equations that were “Greek to me” in more ways than one. But fortunately I had a lot of help in learning mathematics when I was in high school under the mentorship of Sister Marita Joseph, Sisters of St. Joseph, who taught the advanced math courses at the Catholic high school that I attended. Like many of the teachers there, she devoted much of her free time to offering extra credit classes and enrichment activities for her students. I may have lived up to Sister’s expectations in terms of math and science, but I’m afraid I let her down in another area. She was grooming me for the debating team, and I really didn’t have as much aptitude for it as she thought I did. John Greaney, the older student whom she assigned to teach me the ropes, went on to be an Associate Justice on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts.
Undergraduate years, 1958–1962
When it came time to apply to colleges I thought seriously about the possibility of pursuing my interest in weather and climate, but at that time none of the schools that I was considering offered a degree in meteorology as such. Some geology undergraduate majors offered elective courses in meteorology, but I was not interested in majoring in geology. I learned much later that the University of Washington was offering undergraduate degrees at that time, but I was unaware of it.
My father was concerned that a degree in meteorology could prove to be a financial dead end. If a talented guy like WBZ’s Don Kent needed to sell rugs as his “day job” in order to feed his family, why did I think I could I hope to earn a decent living as a meteorologist? That I was unable to rebut his argument at the time reveals how little I had thought about my college education as vocational training as opposed to indulging my scientific curiosity. My parents, who had struggled to earn money to help their families get through the Great Depression, couldn’t understand how I could place scientific curiosity above financial security. Had I known more about what meteorologists actually did for a living, I might have been able to assure them that career satisfaction and financial responsibility were not necessarily mutually exclusive.
One day my father discussed my college plans (or the lack thereof) with one of his good friends: the man who delivered the mail to his insurance company office in downtown Westfield. His friend suggested that I submit an application to Webb Institute of Naval Architecture, where his nephew had earned his degree. He explained that Webb was generously endowed by the estate of William H. Webb, a prominent New York shipbuilder of the late 19th Century. The endowment provided tuition, room and board for all students and the educational program was highly rated. I agreed to apply and was accepted. Fortunately, the application process didn’t require the student to explain why he wanted to be a naval architect. I was certainly open to the idea, but it’s probably not what I would have chosen had it been a financially level playing field.
Many years later, when founder and director of NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) Joseph Smagorinsky was reading my CV in preparation for introducing me at a GFDL seminar, he noticed that my BS degree was from Webb. After my seminar he confided that at the time he graduated from high school during the wartime years, there were, in his mind, two grand scientific challenges: one was to provide a scientific basis for ship design and the other was to advance the state of the art of weather prediction. He told me that he had actually submitted an application to Webb Institute, but that he ended up earning his B.S degree in the wartime meteorology program at New York University, along with many other leaders in the field.
In my freshman and sophomore years at Webb I had to work hard to keep up with my classmates academically. I didn’t have much time to indulge my scientific curiosity or to keep up with the weather. But I do a remember a few experiences during the 10-week winter work term of our sophomore year when I worked in the engine room of a freighter bound for South Africa. The day on which we were to cross the equator I woke up early to the sound of thunder. I checked on the position of the ship and found that we were east of Brazil at about 5°N. The air was warm and humid and a number of cumulonimbus anvils were in sight. I concluded that we must be entering the doldrums, which I had read about in books. With this much convection at 5°N, I eagerly awaited even more exciting weather as we approached the equator, but it didn't materialize. Rather than intensifying, the convection dissipated and soon we were sailing into a brisk, cooler headwind that had all the earmarks of the southeast trades. Evidently, the books that I had seen were out of date. The equatorial belt labeled “the doldrums” is based on notions about the circulation of the tropics that prevailed before the discovery of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) during World War II. The ITCZ remains north of the equator throughout the year. Later that day, around the time we crossed the equator, I suffered another disappointment. The First Mate had warned me to be prepared, when I flushed the toilet, to see the water spiraling down the drain in the opposite direction as it did when we were in the Northern Hemisphere. Much to the First Mate’s amusement, I played the fool and performed the expected before-and-after flushing experiment, and of course, crossing the equator made no difference. The First Mate might not have understood why the Earth’s rotation has a negligible influence on the direction of the general circulation within toilets, but that’s beside the point. He had crossed the equator many times and with experience comes wisdom.
By the time I entered my third year at Webb I noticed that I was near the top of the class in the more theoretically-oriented courses like fluid dynamics, while I had to struggle to get decent grades in the more applied, nitty-gritty engineering courses. It all came to a dramatic climax the night and morning of December 12, 1960, the due date for a boiler design project that my classmates and I had been working on for weeks, and, coincidentally, the day of the final exam in the boiler design course. It was pretty well accepted that most of us would have to make all night stands (or close to it) in order to complete the project and prepare for the exam. But I had an extra problem to contend with: an early-season blizzard. I finished the design project, but I was so excited about the weather outside that I could neither study nor sleep. It didn’t help that my roommate and I were unable to secure the windows in our dorm room, and unmelted snow was piling up on the floor. After I received my failing course grade, I resolved that I was not cut out to be a naval architect.
But lest I give the impression that I didn’t benefit from my Webb education, I should say that the ability to think in three dimensions that I learned in the descriptive geometry course was excellent preparation for synoptic meteorology. Time and time again I have used the steam power plant on a ship that I learned about in the boiler design class as a basis for teaching students about heat engines and the second law of thermodynamics. At Webb I received excellent introductions to differential equations, statics, and fluid dynamics, all of which play central roles in atmospheric sciences. Experiences during the 10-week winter work terms and our BS thesis and other extended, hands-on projects introduced me to experimental work and a variety of practical problem solving techniques that I have drawn upon in my career. All things considered, I can’t think of a better place for me to have done my undergraduate study. Coincidentally, I was not the only one in my graduating class of 17 to pursue a career in science. Joseph Burns, who became a professor at Cornell University, is a leading authority on planetary rings and the small bodies of the solar system (dust, satellites, comets and asteroids).
Graduate education
By the end of my junior year at Webb, I had decided that my future career path would be in science rather than in engineering. And if I was to be in science, there was no reason it couldn’t be in meteorology. By this time I knew that being a TV weatherman was not my only career option in that category, and certainly not the one that I would choose. When I started applying to universities, I was amazed to discover that in contrast to the situation four years ago, there was a plethora of PhD programs to choose from. Meteorology departments like the one at MIT established PhD programs long before they started offering undergraduate degrees. In addition, the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957 spurred the establishment of numerous new degree programs in the physical sciences. The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, established in 1960, was instrumental in supporting the development of new meteorology programs.
It came down to a choice between the University of Washington and MIT. I was relieved to learn that neither of these departments had discounted my application because of my naval architecture degree. I was sorely tempted by the friendly letter from UW department chair Phil Church inviting me to come to Seattle. I had visited the Pacific Northwest on a road trip with my Webb classmate Doug Smith in the summer of 1959 and had been overwhelmed by its spaciousness and natural beauty. But I knew very little about UW at this point and I was persuaded by my father's argument that a degree from a prestigious school like MIT would carry more weight than one from an institution at the other end of the country that was barely known to the East Coast establishment. So after due consideration, I chose MIT. Later in my career I learned that one should judge the value of a PhD degree not only by the reputation of the University that offers the degree, but by the quality of the degree program itself. But I have to admit that had I taken the time to learn about and compare the programs at MIT and UW as they stood at that time, I probably would have made the same choice.
The week before classes started in the autumn of 1962, I took up residence at MIT. I arrived on the weekend when no one was there and went to the office that I was assigned to report to. The sign on the door read “Planetary Circulations Project, Victor P Starr.” The name of the project intrigued me: fortunately, I didn't make the connection between the name of the director and the author of the textbook about weather forecasting in the Westfield Public Library that I hadn't been able to fathom. When I met Starr a day or two later he was cordial and he was forthright in putting me to work on his project. He explained that he had been thinking about how his ideas about the role of eddies in the atmospheric general circulation might be applied to understanding the rotation of spiral galaxies. He envisioned the spiral arms as being analogous to tilted troughs in the atmosphere, which are instrumental in producing poleward flux of angular momentum. He reasoned that just as the geopotential field in planetary atmospheres steers the wind, the gravitational potential field in a galaxy, including the contribution from the concentration of mass in the spiral arms might steer the motion of stars in a galaxy. In place of the geostrophic wind which parallels the geopotential contours, he imagined that the “galactostrophic wind” would parallel the contours of gravitational potential.