Reid Bryson

PhD, University of Chicago
DSc, Denison University
DEngr, Colorado School of Mines

Emeritus Professor, Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences
Geography, and Environmental Studies

Senior Scientist

Center for Climatic Research
Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies
1333 Atmospheric, Oceanic & Space Science Bldg.
1225 W. Dayton St.
Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1695

Phone: (608) 262-5814
Fax: (608) 263-4190
Email: rabryson@wisc.edu


Research Interests

  • Archaeoclimatology (site-specific, high resolution climate modeling),
  • Climate theory
  • Relation of climates to biota and to cultures of the past
  • Naturally defined climatic regions
  • Rapid climatic change

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. Army 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). He also received an honorary D.Sc. from Denison University in 1971, and an honorary D.Engr. from the Colorado School of Mines in 2003.

In 1948, he became the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology, which has since become one of 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 Gaylord Nelson 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 273 articles and eight books ranging over the fields of geology, limnology, meteorology, climatology, archeology, and geography. He is best known for his work in climatology, being cited as one of the "fathers" of scientific climatology, and discoverers of rapid climatic change and anthropogenic climatic change.

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 with climate 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 a new type of computer model for climate: Archaeoclimatic modeling. He has given ten workshops on the use of the model, nationally and internationally. He has now extended -resolution, site-specific climate modeling to many specific archaeological sites around the world. The method seems to be gaining wide acceptance. This model, which runs on a personal computer, has been tested against some of the most sophisticated climate models and competed very successfully.

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.

Additional notes of interest

  • 30th PhD in Meteorology in the history of American education.
  • Over 240 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.

For more information on Reid Bryson's current research in the field of Archaeoclimatology please click here.

Selected Publications

Bryson, R. A., 1966: "Airmasses, Streamlines and the Boreal Forest" Geographical Bulletin (Canada), 8(3):228-269.

Bryson, R. A., W. N. Irving and J. A. Larsen, 1965: "Radiocarbon and Soils Evidence of Former Forest in the Southern Canadian Tundra," Science 147(3653):46-48.

Bryson, R. A., W. M. Wendland, J. D. Ives and J. T. Andrews, 1969:"Radiocarbon Isochrones on the Disintegration of the Laurentide Ice Sheet," Arctic and Alpine Research, 1(1):1-13.

Bryson, R. A., H. H. Lamb, and D. L. Donley, 1974: "Drought and the Decline of Mycenae," Antiquity, XLVIII, pp. 46-50, 1974

Bryson, R.A. (1994). The discovery of the jet stream. Wisconsin Academy Review Summer 1994, 15-17.

Bryson, R.A. (1997). The paradigm of climatology: an essay. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 78, 3, 449-455.

Bryson, R.A. (1997). Proxy indications of Holocene winter rains in southwest Asia compared with simulated rainfall. In “Third Millennium BC Climate Change and Old World Collapse” (H.N. Dalfes, G. Kukla, and H. Weiss, eds.) NATO ASI Series, Vol. I 49, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, pp. 465

Ruter, A., R. A. Bryson, J. E. Kutzbach, S. Vavrus, J. Arzt (in press). Climate and Environment of the Subtropical and Tropical Americas (NH) in the mid-Holocene: Comparison of observations with climate model simulations. Quaternary Science Reviews.