 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Henry Stommel" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Henry Stommel | |
|---|---|
 Henry Stommel | |
| Born | (1920-09-27)September 27, 1920 |
| Died | January 17, 1992(1992-01-17) (aged 71) |
| Alma mater | Yale University |
| Known for | ocean circulation Gulf Stream |
| Awards | ForMemRS[1] Bigelow Medal(1974) Maurice Ewing Medal(1977) Alexander Agassiz Medal(1979) William Bowie Medal(1982) Crafoord Prize(1983) National Medal of Science(1989) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | physical oceanography |
| Institutions | Yale University MIT |
Henry Melson Stommel (September 27, 1920 – January 17, 1992) was a major contributor to the field ofphysical oceanography. Beginning in the 1940s, he advanced theories about globalocean circulation patterns and the behavior of theGulf Stream that form the basis of physical oceanography today. Widely recognized as one of the most influential and productive oceanographers of his time, Stommel was both a groundbreaking theoretician and an astute, seagoing observer.
Stommel was born inWilmington, Delaware. An anomaly among modern scientists, Stommel became a full professor without an earned doctorate. He received his B.S. in astronomy fromYale University (1942) and served there as instructor in mathematics and astronomy (1942–44).[2]
He was research associate at theWoods Hole Oceanographic Institution from 1944 to 1959 where theOffice of Naval Research generously supported his projects.[3] He became professor of oceanography atHarvard University in 1959 and moved toMassachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963, where he remained until 1978, returning to Woods Hole until his retirement. Stommel established the PANULIRUS station (begun in 1954) inBermuda. PANULIRUS was the name of a wooden, round bilged research vessel (thus R/V Panulirus) operated by the Bermuda Biological Station for Research for many years. On a monthly schedule, the vessel obtained sea water samples at vertical intervals from the surface to great depths, which yielded temperature, salinity and some additional chemical data. Because the sea bottom falls away very sharply, particularly to the East-south-east of Bermuda, it is possible to obtain a representative sampling within a few miles of land. The resulting data set constitutes the longest such data series of similar character in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Stommel was elected to theNational Academy of Sciences in 1962 and received theNational Medal of Science in 1989.
Henry Stommel showed that the north-south gradient of the strength of the horizontalCoriolis force (the "beta effect") was responsible for the observed fact that the return flow of the slow interior gyre circulations is concentrated in fast moving western boundary currents, such as theGulf Stream and theKuroshio Current, a process known aswestern intensification. As a result, these western boundary currents have a larger and steadier transport than the corresponding boundary currents, such as theCalifornia Current andCanary Current, on the eastern side of the ocean basins. In subtropical latitudes, the western boundary currents are important in transporting the excess heat the earth receives in the tropics towards the poles.
Together with Arnold Arons, Stommel extended this circulation to the deep ocean, proposing a global circulation in which surface water sinks in the polar regions to feed the deep boundary currents on the western sides of basins, while the interior flow actually moves towards the pole. This work, based on laboratory studies, predated the discovery of such boundary currents, and remains one of the great triumphs of theoretical physical oceanography. Stommel also developed early models of thethermohaline circulation which suggested that it might have more than one stable state.
In addition to his work on large-scale ocean currents, Stommel did research on a variety of problems in oceanography and meteorology. These include work on the classification of estuaries, estimates of turbulent diffusion, and studies of the impact of volcanoes on climate. He, with his wife Elizabeth, were the first to popularly link the1815 eruption of Mount Tambora with the 1816Year Without a Summer.[4][5]
Stommel married Elizabeth Brown, daughter of Huntington Brown, professor of English at theUniversity of Minnesota, and Elizabeth Waldo Wentworth Brown, originally of Boston, on December 6, 1950. They had three children: Matthew (a professional fisherman inFalmouth, Massachusetts), Elijah (a physician at theDartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center), and Abigail Stommel Adams (a nurse practicing in Falmouth).
