Isidoro Orlanski (born 1939) is an Argentine-American atmospheric physicist,

meteorologist A meteorologist is a scientist who studies and works in the field of meteorology aiming to understand or predict Earth's atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric phenomena including the weather. Those who study meteorological phenomena are meteorologists ...

, and ocean scientist. He is known for his contributions to the dynamics of weather systems,

ocean currents An ocean current is a continuous, directed movement of seawater generated by a number of forces acting upon the water, including wind, the Coriolis effect, breaking waves, cabbeling, and temperature and salinity differences. Depth contours ...

and

mesoscale meteorology Mesoscale meteorology is the study of weather systems and processes at horizontal scales of approximately to several hundred kilometres. It is smaller than synoptic scale meteorology, synoptic-scale systems (1,000 km or larger) but larger than Mi ...

. He is an

emeritus professor ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

Early life and education

Isidoro Orlanski was born in Rivera, Buenos Aires, in 1939 to Jewish immigrants Samuel and Sara Orlanski, who fled Wolkowysk, Poland during the early 20th century pogroms. With the help of the Jewish Colonization Association, which enabled Jewish immigrants from

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...

to farm in Argentina, the Orlanski family settled in rural Argentina before moving to

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

in the early 1940s. In 1959, Orlanski enrolled in the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences (Spanish: ''Facultad de Ciencias Exactas'') at the

University of Buenos Aires The University of Buenos Aires (, UBA) is a public university, public research university in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is the second-oldest university in the country, and the largest university of the country by enrollment. Established in 1821 ...

, where he studied physics. In 1964, Orlanski earned a degree in physics from

. In 1965, he received a grant to pursue graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Orlanski completed his PhD in 1967 supervised by Jule Charney. His thesis, titled ''Instability of Frontal Waves,'' earned the Carl Gustav Rossby Award.

Career

Orlanski moved to the

Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) is a laboratory in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR). The current director is Venkatachalam Ramaswamy. It is one of seven ...

(GFDL), where he initially worked with Joseph Smagorinsky. The GFDL, under the leadership of Smagorinsky, was developing numerical models for weather forecasting and climate assessment. He relocated with the lab to

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

where he became a lecturer in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science. By 1980, GFDL had grown to 134 staff members, with Orlanski being appointed the lab's Deputy Director. While on sabbatical in Argentina in 1985, Orlanski established an organization for numerical modeling that became the '' Centro de Investigaciones para el Mar y la Atmósfera'' (CIMA). Orlanski retired from GFDL in 2007 but continued teaching at

until 2017, retiring as a lecturer with the rank of Senior Meteorologist, Emeritus.

Research

Orlanski worked in the field of

. He introduced the terms ''meso-alpha,'' ''meso-beta,'' and ''meso-gamma'' to classify the horizontal scales of atmospheric processes. The primary purpose of Orlanski’s classification of mesoscale phenomena was to assist modelers in designing limited-area models for mesoscale prediction. This framework was used in the design of field experiments for mesoscale observations, as well as in defining the spatial and temporal scales necessary for forecast models. It took over two decades for both numerical models and observational technologies to achieve an acceptable level of accuracy in this domain. Orlanski's research on boundary conditions for unbounded hyperbolic flows has applications beyond meteorology.

Awards and honors

* Carl Gustav Rossby Award (MIT, 1968) – For best PhD thesis in the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences program. * RAICES Prize (2011) – Awarded by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of Argentina for contributions to science and scientific development in Argentina. * Fellow of the

American Meteorological Society The American Meteorological Society (AMS) is a scientific and professional organization in the United States promoting and disseminating information about the atmospheric, oceanic, and hydrologic sciences. Its mission is to advance the atmosph ...

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Orlanski, Isidoro 1939 births Living people American meteorologists University of Buenos Aires alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Princeton University faculty American atmospheric scientists Computational physicists People from Buenos Aires Province Fellows of the American Meteorological Society