Arnt Eliassen

The 1998 Vilhelm Bjerknes Medal is awarded to Arnt Eliassen for his outstanding fundamental contributions to dynamical meteorology.

Arnt Eliassen has been a leading name in meteorological research for nearly half a century. During this time he has made outstanding contributions to several branches of dynamical meteorology including, the dynamics of mountain waves, the dynamics of fronts and frontal circulations, and numerical modelling, as well as the development of the basic equations in various coordinate systems.

He was the first to derive the hydrostatic primitive equations in pressure coordinates and wrote a pioneering paper with Jile Charney, which was the first successful attempt at numerical weather prediction. He was the first to derive equations for the balanced secondary calculation in a vortex and was senior author (with Enok Palm) of another seminal paper on energy transfer by mountain waves. His paper with Charney on the theory of hurricane growth has had a major influence on tropical meteorology for 25 years.

Professor Eliassen is a most worthy recipient of the EGS Vilhelm Bjerknes Medal for Atmospheric Research for his outstanding fundamental contributions to dynamical meteorology.

Newsletter 67, 37, 1998