Joanne Simpson

Joanne Simpson

Simpson bent over reams of images of clouds that she filmed during long flights between islands in the tropical Pacific.
Born Joanne Gerould
March 23, 1923
Boston, MA
Died March 4, 2010 (aged 86)
Washington, D.C.
Nationality American
Spouse Robert Simpson

Joanne Simpson (born Joanne Gerould; March 23, 1923 – March 4, 2010) was the first woman to ever receive a Ph.D. in meteorology.[1] She eventually became NASA's lead weather researcher and authored or co-authored over 190 articles. Simpson contributed to many areas of the atmospheric sciences, particularly in the field of tropical meteorology. She has researched hot towers, hurricanes, the trade winds, air-sea interactions, and helped develop the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission.

Simpson was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a recipient of the American Meteorological Society's Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal, its highest honor, for "outstanding contributions to man's understanding of the structure of the atmosphere."

Simpson was a graduate of the University of Chicago. In the following 30 years, before joining NASA, she researched and/or taught at various places, including the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, UCLA, NOAA, and the University of Virginia.

She had to endure years of not being taken seriously by her male colleagues and being passed over for jobs simply because of her sex. She is quoted as saying winning the Carl-Gustav Rossby Research Medal in 1983 made her feel "it isn't really so ridiculous that I did all of this. I'm not really a freak; I am a member of the community."

Yet, poignantly, in an article published in the New York Academy of Sciences Annals, she was quoted as saying "I am not convinced that either the position, rewards or achievements have been worth the cost. My personal and married life and child raising have surely suffered from the professional attainments I have achieved."

Her brother Daniel Gerould is the Lucille Lortel Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and Director of Publications of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.

Simpson died March 4, 2010 in Washington D.C., surrounded by her family.

Research

In 1958, Malkus collaborated with Herbert Riehl and calculated the average moist static energy and how it varied vertically throughout the atmosphere. They noted that at altitudes up to approximately 750 hPa the moist static energy decreased with height. Above 750 hPa, the moist static energy increased with height which had neither been observed or explained before. Riehl and Malkus realized that this must be due to moist convection that started near the surface that continued rising relatively adiabatically to near 50,000 feet (15,000 m). They called these clouds "undiluted chimneys" but they would later be commonly referred to as hot towers.[2] They estimated that it would take less than 5,000 of these towers daily throughout the tropics to result in the moist static energy profile they observed.

References

  1. ^ Tao, W.-K.; Halverson, J.; LeMone, M.; Alder, R.; Garstang, M.; Houze Jr., R.; Pielke Sr., R.; Woodley, W. (2003). "The Research of Dr. Joanne Simpson: Fifty Years Investigating Hurricanes, Tropical Clouds, and Cloud Systems". Meteorological Monographs. Cloud Systems, Hurricanes, and the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM): A Tribute to Dr. Joanne Simpson 29 (51): 1–16. Bibcode 2003MetMo..29....1T. doi:10.1175/0065-9401(2003)029<0001:CTRODJ>2.0.CO;2. http://www.atmos.washington.edu/MG/PDFs/mono03_tao_joanne.pdf. 
  2. ^ Riehl, H.; Malkus, J.S. (1958). "On the heat balance in the equatorial trough zone". Geophysica 6: 503–538. 

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