The Bjerknes Centre is named as a tribute to Vilhelm Bjerknes, who is the founder of the Bergen School of Meteorology. At his 150 year anniversary, the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, the Geophysical Institute and The Norwegian Meteorological Institute invites scientists and the public to an anniversary lecture by Sigbjørn Grønås.
Grønås will give a speech on Bjerknes’ vision on weather forecast from 1904. Recently Grønås has transcribed three popular essays written by Vilhelm Bjerknes, which were published in the norwegian newspaper Aftenposten in 1904, parallell to the publishing of the scientific article ”The Problem of Weather Forecasting from the Standpoint of Mechanics and Physics”, in the German journal ” “Meteorologische Zeitschrift”.
The series of three newspaper essays, is twice as long as the scientific article, and contains some interesting additional points not taken up in the paper, such as the problem of acquiring observations aloft, a discussion of possible future predictability for weather forecasting and the importance of predicting seasonal changes in the ocean circulation using similar methods.
Grønås has translated the essays in Aftenposten from danish to english, the english version is available here .
Guest lecture by sir Brian Hoskins
We are happy to inform that on the 19th March Professor Sir Brian Hoskins will give a guest lecture on Vilhelm Bjerknes’ fingerprints on modern climate research. Sir Brian Hoskins is known to be one of the leading meteorologists of today.
Sir Brian Hoskins became the first Director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London in January 2008, and now shares his time between Imperial and Reading University, where he is Professor of Meteorology.
His degrees are in mathematics from the University of Cambridge and he spent post-doc years in the USA before moving to Reading, where he became a professor in his thirties and was a head of department for six years.
For the ten years up to September 2010 he held a Royal Society Research Professorship. His research is in weather and climate, in particular the understanding of atmospheric motion from frontal to planetary scales. His international roles have included being vice-chair of the Joint Scientific Committee for the World Climate Research Programme, President of the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences and involvement in the 2007 IPCC international climate change assessment.
He has also had numerous UK roles, and is currently a member of the UK Committee on Climate Change. He is a member of the science academies of the UK, USA, China and Europe and has received a number of awards including the top prizes of the UK and US Meteorological Societies and honorary DScs from the Universities of Bristol and East Anglia. He was knighted in 2007 for his services to the environment.
The lecture at VilVite Auditorium in the Vitensenteret is open for the public.
Welcome at 19 March, 10:15!