Reid Bryson

Reid Bryson received his B.A. degree in geology at Denison University in 1941, and his Ph.D. in meteorology at the University of Chicago in 1948. He joined the faculty of the UW-Madison in 1946 at the end of his military service as a major in the Air Weather Service of the U.S. Arny Air Corps. His first appointment was in the Departments of Geography and Geology (in which he had been a graduate student before World War II).

In 1948, he became the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology, which has since become the largest and one of the most prestigious meteorology departments in the nation. During the late 1960's, he was active in the university's Interdisciplinary Studies Committee on the Future of Man and in subsequent committees that led to the establishment of the Institute for Environmental Studies, of which he became the first director in 1970.

Over his long career as scientist and teacher, Reid Bryson has significantly advanced the understanding of climate, people, and the environment. He has written more than 200 articles and five books ranging over the fields of geology, limnology, meteorology, climatology, archeology, and geography.

His book, Climates of Hunger, co-authored with Thomas Murray, received the Banta Medal for Literary Achievement, one his articles, a mixture of poetry and science, was chosen as the "outstanding learned article of 1981" by the Educational Press Association, and two papers in Environmental Conservation were awarded prizes for "best paper of the year."

Much of Bryson's work has dealt withclimate in relation to human ecology, and this has lead him into extensive travel, especially 26 trips to Asia where he worked primarily on anthropogenic changes of climate and landscape in general. The most obvious result of this work is seen in the introduction of pen-feeding of goats in Rajasthan, which he suggested in the mid-1960s and is now widespread and effective. Other work was on agricultural long-range forecasting of climate, especially the Indian monsoon. His best known laboratory works are in development of new approaches to climatology, such as airstream analysis and quantitative, objective methods of reconstructing past climates. He has also developed computer models of climate: the past history of the monsoon in Rajasthan, model simulation of Pleistocene ice-volume and Pleistocene climatic history. He recently published a model simulation of the West African Intertropical Convergence position and rainfall for the past 20-40 millennia, and has now extended that work on high-resolution climate modeling to specific archaeological sites and in montane regions. He is also working on three books.

Though born in Michigan in 1920, he regards Wisconsin as his home state, his profession as teaching, and his field as interdisciplinary earth science with a strong humanistic component.

30th PhD in Meteorology in the history of American education.
Most cited climatologist in the world according to British Institute of Geographers article, 5th most cited physical geographer and 11th in list of all geographers.
Over 230 publications, 5 books
Dr. Reid Bryson's volcanic eruptions and aerosol optical depth data has been added to the World Data Center for Paleoclimatology in Boulder, Colorado. The data is available at

ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/climate_forcing/bryson1988.

The suggested citation for the data is:

Bryson, R.A., 2002, Bryson 1988 Volcanic Eruptions and Aerosol Optical Depth Data. IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series #2002-022. NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder, CO, USA.