Erik Palmen’s Contributions To The Development Of Cyclone Concepts

Erik Palmen’s scientific career encompassed the era during which theory and observations were brought together in a coherent conception of the global atmosphere. Earlier general circulation schemes mostly hypothesized meridional cells symmetrical about the earth, although some investigators, notably Dove and FitzRoy, emphasized air-mass exchanges by synoptic disturbances (Lorenz 1967, pp. 59–78). Contemporary studies of cyclones during the 19th and early 20th centuries, based on then-emerging thermodynamical-physical principles and fragmentary observations, established many of their significant features (Kutzbach 1979). Elements of the earlier investigations, together with new insights from observations and theory, were assimilated into the grand concept of the polar front theory of cyclones and the general circulation.