A seminar on frontiers of atmospheric science was held on Feb. 20 in Beijing to celebrate the 90th birthday of Prof. Ye Duzheng (Tu-Cheng Yeh), a pioneer scientist in the atmospheric science of modern China and laureate of the 2003 top prize of the World Meteorological Organization.
A seminar on frontiers of atmospheric science was held on Feb. 20 in Beijing to celebrate the 90th birthday of Prof. Ye Duzheng (Tu-Cheng Yeh), a pioneer scientist in the atmospheric science of modern China and laureate of the 2003 top prize of the World Meteorological Organization.
The celebration was attended by more than 300 people, including such scientific heavyweights and high-ranking officials as Vice President Li Jiayang, Vice Science and Technology Minister Liu Yanhua, President of the National Natural Science Foundation Chen Yiyu, Administrator of the China Meteorological Administration Qin Dahe, Vice Chairman of the Chinese Association of Science and Technology Zeng Qingcun, CAS members Liu Dongsheng, Chen Bengshu and Tao Shiyan. CAS President Lu Yongxiang sent his congratulations.
Born in Feb, 21,1916, Prof. Ye received his Ph. D degree in 1948 from University of Chicago, USA. Since his return to China in1950, Prof. Ye has been actively engaged in initiating the undertakings of meteorology in this country, making indelible contributions in its development. He is a founder of the CAS Institute of Atmospheric Physics and a CAS member.
For decades, he has devoted himself to research work and scored outstanding achievements in a bunch of domains of atmospheric science, such as the basic theory on dynamic meteorology, the atmospheric circulation, meteorology on Tibetan Plateau (especially he discovered the thermal effect of Tibetan Plateau on the general
Prof. Ye's theory of energy dispersion published in 1948, explaining the rapid development of a train of long waves of downstream from a sudden formation of a strong trough was a substantial contribution to the long wave theory proposed by Rossby, and has been regarded as one of the important classical theories in dynamic meteorology.
In the 1950s and the 1960s, Prof. Ye led a group of Chinese scientists engaging in the study of the dynamics of atmospheric general circulation. Among many others they found the significant differences in the balances of angular momentum, heat and energy between low and high-index circulation. For the first time, they studied thoroughly the formation, development, maintenance, and decay of blocking high in winter season in different regions of the Northern Hemisphere. They showed that the seasonal change from winter state of atmospheric circulation to that of summer completed in a way of abrupt changes. His book Some Fundamental Problems of the General Circulation of the Atmosphere (1958) was one of the earliest publications in the dynamics of the general circulation of the atmosphere.
In the same period, Prof. Ye and his cooperators also made a great contribution to the study of quasi-geostrophic motion in the atmosphere. They found two fundamental reasons for this kind of motion: (1) the vertical scale of the motion relative to its horizontal scale is small and (2) the north-south temperature gradient produced by solar radiation is not large enough. They also for the first time emphasized the crucial importance of spatial scale of the atmospheric motion in the geostrophic adjustment between the velocity field and pressure field. Further they found in meso-and small-scale motions there also exits certain kind of adjustment between the velocity and pressure field. The study of hydrostatic adjustment by sonic and gravity waves is also a contribution.
Besides, the studies also show that for the development of most of the weather systems, there exist three times scale, the time scale of adjustment stage being the shortest, the time scale of developing stage being the longest. They further reveal that similar to the spatial scale effect in the geostrophic adjustment of large scale motion there is also a scale effect in small scale motion and in cumulus scale motion.
More than 40 years, Prof. Ye pioneered the research into the meteorology of Tibetan Plateau. As early as in 1950, he discovered the split of westerlies into two jet streams over the Plateau region, which have strong impacts on the circulation and weather in East Asia. He also discovered that Tibetan Plateau is heating source in summer, and sink in winter. Since then he has made many contributions to the study of thermal effect of the Tibetan Plateau on circulation and climate. Most of the results have been collected in the book The Meteorology of Tibetan Plateau (1959).and "the Meteorology of Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau"(1979).
Since the mid 1980s Prof. Ye has devoted himself in the study of global change. He is a pioneer in this field in China. He and his co-workers organized the China National Committee for IGBP and was elected as the chairman of this committee for first two teams. He made great contributions to develop this new field of earth science in china. In resent years he proposed that the adaptation to the impact of global change and sustainable development should be studied closely together. The ultimate aim of the adaptation to the impact of global change is for sustainable development and in order to be sustainably developed the impact of future global change should be considered.
Besides, Prof. Ye is also very active in international scientific circles. He was a member of the JSC/WCRP of ICSU and WMO in 1982-1988, a member of the IAMAP executive committee in 1983-1987, a member of SC-IGBP in 1987-1990, and a member of the IUGG Bureau in 1987-1995. Prof. Ye makes great efforts to promote international cooperation in atmospheric science and enhanced the academic exchanges between China and other countries. He also initiated and conducted large research projects in cooperation with other countries, such as the CO2-induced climate change with the DOE of the U. S. A. and the land surface process field experiment in the Heihe Basin with the Department of Education of Japan.
He is also an honorary member of the Chinese Meteorology Society, a foreign member of Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and the honorary Member of the American Meteorological Society, and the honorary Membership of the Royal Meteorology Society of the U. K.
