Discovery of the jet stream
Descubrimiento de la corriente en chorro
- Date
- años 1920 · confidence medium
- Place
- Tateno, Ibaraki, Japan
- Credited to
- Wasaburo Oishi
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
The Japanese meteorologist Wasaburo Oishi, director of the Tateno aerological observatory, tracked with pilot balloons a high-speed wind at high altitude — the jet stream — and published his finding in 1926, though his work, written in Esperanto, went almost unnoticed outside Japan for years.
His discovery was not recognized internationally until Allied pilots and meteorologists rediscovered the phenomenon in the 1940s, partly due to the language barrier of Esperanto, in which he published.
What it led to
- understanding of upper-level atmospheric circulation
- later explanation of phenomena such as Japan's WWII balloon bombs
- optimization of commercial flight routes using the wind