Aksel Wiin-Nielsen Symposium
Conference Program
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The Aksel Wiin-Nielsen Symposium, sponsored by the American Meteorological Society, will be held 24 January 2012, as part of the 92nd AMS Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The Wiin-Nielsen Symposium honors the late Aksel Wiin-Nielsen for his fundamental contributions to dynamical meteorology and Numerical Weather Prediction. Dr. Wiin-Nielsen began his scientific career in 1952 as scientific assistant to University of Copenhagen meteorology professor Ragnar Fjörtoft. Aksel’s career next took him to Stockholm, Sweden, and the Institute of Meteorology set up by Carl-Gustaf Rossby in 1947. The institute had become a vibrant center for numerical weather prediction and there Aksel participated in the first numerical prediction that completed its computation before the forecast verified. In 1959, Aksel began the 15-year portion of his U.S. career by working at the Joint Numerical Weather Prediction Unit, run by the U.S. Weather Bureau, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Navy. When the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder was established, Aksel accepted an offer from NCAR in 1961. There his research focused on the general circulation of the atmosphere. The final U.S. part of Aksel’s career began at the University of Michigan, in 1963, where he created a successful meteorology department that later expanded to include oceanography and aeronomy. He stayed at the university for 10 years, building the department into a leading U.S. center for research in dynamical meteorology and the general circulation of the atmosphere. In 1973 th European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) was formed, and Aksel, who had been invited to become its first director, began working at he center, located in the United Kingdom, in January 1974. Aksel’s tenure at ECMWF ended in 1979 when he became secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a position he held for 4 years. Following his years at WMO, Aksel returned to Denmark in 1984 to take the position of director of the Danish Meteorological Service. In 1986, he resigned from the Danish Meteorological Service to become Professor of Geophysics at the University of Copenhagen, a position he held until 1994.
The theme of the symposium is Dynamical Meteorology: Numerical Weather Prediction, Atmospheric Stability and the General Circulation. Invited speakers will survey the evolution of research in these areas during Aksel’s career, including contributions from and inspired by him and from other scientists, and present the most updated advancement in these fields. The symposium will consist of invited oral presentations only.
All registrants for the AMS Annual Meeting are invited to attend the Winn-Nielsen Symposium. A banquet dinner to honor Aksel’s memory will be held on 23 January. The Wiin-Nielsen banquet ticket is not included in the conference registration package and must be purchased separately. We encourage you to purchase tickets when preregistering since only a limited number will be available onsite.
For more information, please contact the program chairpersons: Tsing-Chang Chen (e-mail: tmchen@iastate.edu), Lennart Bengtsson (e-mail: lennart.bengtsson@zmaw.de) or Joe Tribbia (e-mail: tribbia@ucar.edu). (6/11)