Bergen School cyclone model and polar front theory
Modelo de ciclón y frente polar de la Escuela de Bergen
- Date
- 1918-1922 · confidence high
- Place
- Bergen, Vestland, Norway
- Credited to
- Vilhelm Bjerknes, Jacob Bjerknes, Halvor Solberg and Tor Bergeron
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
The Bergen group described mid-latitude cyclones as waves on the polar front, with warm, cold and occluded fronts, and created a language for analysing weather maps. It moved forecasting from intuition to the physics of air masses.
The term 'front' was taken by analogy with the 1914-1918 war front. Jacob Bjerknes published it in 1919; occlusion is due to Bergeron (1919-1922).
What it led to
- synoptic maps with fronts in weather services worldwide
- the air-mass concept (Bergeron, 1928)
- the basis for later numerical weather prediction