Budyko, Mikhail (1920–2001)

MIKHAIL IVANOVICH BUDYKO was an environmental scientist who was internationally recognized for his pioneering work on the Earths energy balance, surface hydrology, and climate change, and the role of climate in regulating Earths biosphere. His work brought about the scientific discipline termed physical climatology, which, in contrast to empirical climatology, is based on the first principles quantitative analysis. Budyko strongly emphasized the importance of the Earths surface and atmosphere thermal balances, which are at the heart of all scientific problems related to climate change. His approach allowed fast and successful development of the mathematical tools for analysis of recent climate changes, interpretation of past ones, and prediction of future changes.

Budyko was born January 21, 1920, in Gomel, a small Belorussian town (then in the Soviet Union), and before World War II moved to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia, to pursue his higher education. He received his Master of Science degree in Hydro-Aero-Dynamics in 1942 from the Division of Physics of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. Immediately following, he was employed as a scientific researcher in the Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory (MGO), the oldest Russian meteorological research institution, which during World War II was evacuated from Leningrad to Sverdlovsk (near the Ural Mountains). Within two years (in 1944), Budyko earned his Candidate Degree (Ph.D.), and, in 1951, he defended his Doctoral Degree, the highest scientific degree in Russia.

In 1954, he became a head of the MGO, where he remained for the following 21 years. He was the youngest MGO head since its founding in 1849. His fast ascent in the scientific community gained Budyko a high level of scientific recognition both within and outside Russia, and inspired a new generation of seientists [Page 143]in seeking careers in climate change and radiative transfer.

Among Budyko's scientific achievements is the development of a procedure to calculate the components of the thermal balance of the Earths surface. His method allowed for calculating the components of the heat balance from measurements of the lapse rate of atmospheric temperature and humidity of the surface layer of the atmosphere. Using these techniques, Budyko compiled the first maps of the annual thermal balance components in the southern area of the European part of Soviet Union, determined the latitudinal distribution of the thermal and moisture balance components of land and ocean surfaces for the Northern Hemisphere, and established the factors governing the characteristics of this distribution.

In his follow-up research, Budyko developed a method for calculating the radiation balance of land from data on the water balance. Based on this research, he introduced the “Budyko aridity index,” which gathers and analyzes information on hydrothermal regimes of a particular Earth region. In 1956, with other Russian scientists, Budyko developed a “periodic law of climatic zonality,” that the same values of the aridity index can be met in different geographical zones. For his work on thermal balance, Budyko was awarded the Lenin National Prize in 1958, the first among climate scientists.

In 1961, Budyko recognizedanthropogenic(human-induced) global warming. Primarily through analysis and interpretation of observational data, Budyko developed a quantitative relationship between surface temperature and incoming solar radiation, using it to formulate the energy-balance global change model, one of the earliest developed. Using it, he deduced that the Earth's climate might be sensitive to small disturbances in the radiative balance.

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