User:Alexh19740110/Lindzenearlydraft

Education
Lindzen attended the Bronx High School of Science and after winning Regents' and National Merit Scholarships, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and then Harvard University. From Harvard, he received an A.B. in Physics in 1960, followed by an S.M. in Applied Mathematics in 1961 and then a Ph.D., also in Applied Mathematics, in 1964. His thesis, entitled Radiative and photochemical processes in strato- and mesospheric dynamics, concerned the interactions of ozone photochemistry, radiative transfer, and dynamics in the middle atmosphere.

Early work (1964-1983)
Lindzen's early work was concerned with ozone photochemistry, the dynamics of the middle atmosphere, the theory of atmospheric tides, and planetary waves. His work in these areas led him to a number of fundamental mathematical and scientific discoveries, including the discovery of negative equivalent depths in classical tidal theory, explanations for both the quasi-biennial oscillation of the Earth's stratosphere and the four day period of the superrotation of the Venus atmosphere above the cloud top.

Ozone photochemistry
His Ph.D. thesis of 1964 concerned the interactions of ozone photochemistry, radiative transfer and the dynamics of the middle atmosphere. This formed the basis of his seminal Radiative and Photochemical Processes in Mesospheric Dynamics that was published in four parts in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences between 1965 and 1966. The first of these, Part I: Models for Radiative and Photochemical Processes, was co-authored with his Harvard colleague and former Ph.D. thesis advisor, Richard M. Goody, who is well-known for his classic 1964 textbook Atmospheric Radiation. The Lindzen and Goody (1965) study has been widely cited as foundational in the exact modeling of middle atmosphere ozone photochemistry. This work was extended in 1973 to include the effects of nitrogen and hydrogen reactions with his former Ph.D. student, Donna Blake, in Effect of photochemical models on calculated equilibria and cooling rates in the stratosphere.

Lindzen's work on ozone photochemistry has been important in studies that look at the effects that anthropogenic ozone depletion will have on climate.

Atmospheric tides
According to the Newsweek journalist, Fred Guterl, it was Lindzen's boyhood interest in ham radio that led him to the study of atmospheric tides, for which he is most renowned.

Since the time of Laplace (1799), scientists had been puzzled as to why pressure variations measured at the Earth's surface associated with the semi-diurnal solar tide dominate those of the diurnal tide in amplitude, when intuitively one would expect the diurnal (daily) passage of the sun to dominate. Lord Kelvin (1882) had proposed the so-called "resonance" theory, wherein the semi-diurnal tide would be "selected" over the diurnal oscillation if the atmosphere was somehow able to oscillate freely at a period of very close to 12 hours, in the same way that overtones are selected on a vibrating string. By the second half of the twentieth century, however, observations had failed to confirm this hypothesis, and an alternative was proposed, viz. that something must instead suppress the diurnal tide. In 1961, Manfred Siebert suggested that absorption of solar insolation by tropospheric water vapour might account for the reduction of the diurnal tide, but he failed to include a role for stratospheric ozone. This was rectified in 1963 by the Australian physicist Stuart Thomas Butler and his student K.A. Small who showed that stratospheric ozone aborbs an even greater part of the solar insolation.

Nevertheless, the predictions of classical tidal theory still did not agree with observations. It was Lindzen, in his classic 1966 paper, On the theory of the diurnal tide, who showed that the solution set of Hough functions given by Bernard Haurwitz to Laplace's tidal equation was incomplete: modes with negative equivalent depths had been omitted. Lindzen went on to calculate the thermal response of the diurnal tide to ozone and water vapor absorption in detail and showed that when his theoretical developments were included, the surface pressure oscillation was predicted with approximately the magnitude and phase observed, as were most of the features of the diurnal wind oscillations in the mesosphere. In 1967, along with his NCAR colleague, Douglas D. McKenzie, Lindzen extended the theory to include a term for Newtonian cooling due to emission of infrared radiation by carbon dioxide in the stratosphere along with ozone photochemical processes, and then in 1968 he showed that the theory also predicted that the semi-diurnal oscillation would be insensitive to variations in the temperature profile, which is why it is observed so much more strongly and regularly at the surface.

Whilst holding the position of Research Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, Lindzen was noticed and befriended by the ageing Professor Sydney Chapman, who had contributed to the theory of atmospheric tides in a number of papers from the 1920s through to the 1940s. This led to their joint publication in 1969 of a 186 page monograph (republished in 1970 as a book) Atmospheric Tides. By that stage, Lindzen had already moved to the University of Chicago where he had received a Professorship in Meteorology.

The quasi-biennial oscillation
Although it wasn't realized at the time, the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) was first observed during the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, when the ash from the volcano was transported around the globe from east to west by stratospheric winds in about two weeks. These winds became known as the "Krakatoa easterlies." It was observed a second time in 1908, by the German meteorologist Arthur Berson, who saw that winds blow from the west at 15km altitude in tropical Africa from his balloon experiments. These became known as the "Berson westerlies." However, it was not until the early 1960s that the ~ 26 month cycle of the QBO was first described, independently by Richard J. Reed in 1960 and Veryhard and Ebdon in 1961.

Lindzen recalls his discovery of the mechanism underlying the QBO in his semi-autobiographical review article, On the development of the theory of the QBO. His interest in the phenomenon began in 1961 when his Ph.D. advisor, Richard M. Goody, speculated that the 26 month relaxation time for stratospheric ozone at 25km in the tropics might somehow be related to the 26 month period of the QBO, and suggested investigation of this idea as a thesis topic. In fact, Lindzen's, Radiative and photochemical processes in mesospheric dynamics, Part II: Vertical propagation of long period disturbances at the equator, documented the failure of this attempt to explain the QBO.

Lindzen's work on atmospheric tides led him to the study of planetary waves and the general circulation of atmospheres. By 1967, he had contributed a number papers on the theory of waves in the middle atmosphere. In Planetary waves on beta planes, he developed a beta plane approximation for simplifying the equations of classical tidal theory, whilst at the same time developing planetary wave relations. He noticed from his equations that eastward-traveling waves (known as Rossby waves since their discovery in 1939 by Carl-Gustav Rossby) and westward-traveling waves (which Lindzen himself helped in establishing as "atmospheric Kelvin waves") with periods less than five days were "vertically trapped." At the same time, an important paper by Booker and Bretherton (1967) appeared, which Lindzen read with great interest. Booker and Bretherton showed that vertically propogating gravity waves were completely absorbed at a critical level.

In his classic 1968 paper with James R. Holton, A theory of the quasi-biennial oscillation, Lindzen presented his theory of the QBO after testing it in a two-dimensional (2-D) numerical model that had been developed by Holton and John M. Wallace. They showed that the QBO could be driven by vertically propagating gravity waves with phase speeds in both westward and eastward directions and that the oscillation arose through a mechanism involving a two-way feedback between the waves and the mean flow. It was a bold conjecture, given that there was very little observational evidence available to either confirm or confute the hypothesis. In particular, there was still no observational evidence of the westward-traveling "Kelvin" waves; Lindzen postulated their existence theoretically.

In the years following the publication of Lindzen and Holton (1968), more observational evidence became available, and Lindzen's fundamental insight into the mechanism driving the QBO was confirmed. Today it is accepted as fact. However, the theory of interaction via critical level absorption was found to be incorrect and was replaced by attenuation due to radiative cooling. The revised theory was published in the Holton and Lindzen (1972) paper, An updated theory for the quasibiennial cycle of the tropical stratosphere.

One of the reasons for Lindzen's global warming skepticism is the failure today of general circulation models (GCMs) in reproducing the circulation pattern of the QBO. He attributes this failure to their lack of vertical resolution.

The superrotation of Venus
Since the 1960s a puzzling phenomenon has been observed in the atmosphere of Venus whereat the atmosphere above the cloud base is seen to travel around the planet about 50 times faster than the rotation of the planet surface, or in only four to five Earth-days. In 1974 a theory was proposed by Stephen B. Fels and Lindzen to explain this so-called "superrotation" which held that the rotation is driven by the thermal atmospheric tide. An alternative theory was proposed by Peter J. Gierasch in the following year which held instead that the meridional (Hadley) circulation may transport the momentum by eddy-mixing. The actual cause of this phenomenon continues to be debated in the literature, with GCM experiments suggesting that both the Fels/Lindzen and Gierasch mechanisms are involved.

Wave-CISK and cumulus convection
Charney and Eliassen 1964 - CISK theory proposed to explain tropical hurricanes

Lindzen and Holton 1968 - atmospheric Kelvin waves named and identified

Lindzen 1974 - wave-CISK hypothesis formulated, a number of interesting predictions made

Schneider and Lindzen 1976 - parameterization of momentum exchange by cumulus convection
 * -> adopted in ECHAM3/Tiedtke/ECHAM4/5


 * ->Thompson and Hartmann 1979 - argued that cumulus friction would be negligible


 * ->Schneider and Lindzen 1980 - led to slight modification of SL1976 param

Schneider 1977

Stevens 1977 (Ph.D thesis advised) Atmospheric Waves Forced by Cumulus Convection in the Tropics

Stevens, Lindzen and Shapiro 1977 - new model of tropical waves incorporating momentum mixing by cumulus convection
 * -> adopted in ECHAM3/Tiedtke/ECHAM4/5

Stevens and Lindzen 1978 - Tropical wave-CISK with a moisture budget and cumulus friction

Lindzen 1981 - postulates that "...when there is a deep layer of conditional instability and large-scale moisture convergence, cumulus clouds exist that entrain environmental air through their base and through their sides directly proportional to the supply of moisture and detrain cloud air at higher levels
 * -> adopted in ECHAM3/Tiedtke/ECHAM4/5

Lindzen 2003 - current thinking

The theory of the ice ages
Budyko 1969 and Sellars 1969 - attempted to model the ice age cycles using energy balance models.

Lindzen and Farrell 1977 - suggests the Hadley flux adjustment to make energy balance models both more realistic and more stable, responding to growing alarm about global cooling. -> this adjustment was adopted later in North et al. 1983 and other EBNs.


 * ->Warren and (Stephen H.) Schneider 1979 - however disagreed that the LF modifications were more "realistic."


 * ->Lindzen and Farrell 1980a - replied, showing that WH misunderstood the LF paper.

Lindzen and Farrell 1980c - new parameterization of heat transport, extended the work of Lindzen and Farrell 1977.

Lindzen 1986 - simple model for the ice ages

Lindzen 1988 - discussion of the role of CO2

Lindzen and Pan 1994 - a mechanism for the 100K cycle is proposed, viz. orbital eccentricity affecting the Hadley circulation (winter equator-to-pole heat fluxes) in turn affecting the mean temperature.

Note the later Roe and Lindzen 2001a and 2001b studies seem to be independent of this earlier work.

Convection, water vapour, and the Iris
Manabe and Stouffer 1980

Lindzen, Hou and Farrell 1982 - showed convective model choice in radiative-convective equilibrium models leads to lower sensitivity to CO2

Sun and Lindzen 1993

Chou 1994

Lindzen 1997

Lindzen, Chou and Hou 2001

Chou and Lindzen 2003

Su et al. 2008

Rondanelli and Lindzen 2009

Lindzen and Choi 2009

Views on ozone depletion
Lindzen has never publicly questioned the dangers of anthropogenic CFC emissions and ozone depletion. Moreover, in a recent interview with Peer Teuwsen, he stated that it is still a problem, but that all funding has been redirected to climate change research: "After the signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1987 for the protection of the Ozone layer, research funds dried up. Ozone was not a problem anymore - even though it still is."

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Links (research only)
User:Alexh19740110/LindzenResearch

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