Mikhail I. Budyko (1920 – )
Belarusian geophysicist, climatologist

Professor Mikhail Ivanovich Budyko is regarded as the founder of physical climatology. Born in Gomel in the former Soviet Union, now Belarus, Budyko earned his master of sciences degree in 1942 from the Division of Physics of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. As a researcher at the Leningrad Geophysical Observatory, he received his doctorate in physical and mathematical sciences in 1951. Budyko served as deputy director of the Geophysical Observatory until 1954, as director until 1972, and as head of the Division for Physical Climatology at the observatory from 1972 until 1975. In that year he was appointed director of the Division for Climate Change Research at the State Hydrological Institute in St. Petersburg.

During the 1950s, Budyko pioneered studies on global climate. He calculated the energy or heat balance—the amount of the Sun's radiation that is absorbed by the Earth versus the amount reflected back into space—for various regions of the Earth's surface and compared these with observational data. He found that the heat balance influenced various phenomena including the weather. Budyko's groundbreaking book, Heat Balance of the Earth's Surface, published in 1956, transformed climatology from a qualitative into a quantitative physical science. These new physical methods based on heat balance were quickly adopted by climatologists around the world. Budyko directed the compilation of an atlas illustrating the components of the Earth's heat balance. Published in 1963, it remains an important reference work for global climate research.

During the 1960s, scientists were puzzled by geological findings indicating that glaciers once covered much of the planet, even the tropics. Budyko examined a phenomenon called planetary albedo , a quantifiable term that describes how much a given geological feature reflects sunlight back into space. Snow and ice reflect heat and have a high albedo. Dark seawater, which absorbs heat, has a low albedo. Land formations are intermediate, varying with type and heat-absorbing vegetation. As snow and ice-cover increase with a global temperature drop, more heat is reflected back, ensuring that the planet becomes colder. This phenomenon is called ice-albedo feedback. Budyko found an underlying instability in ice-albedo feedback, called the snowball Earth or white Earth solution: if a global temperature drop caused ice to extend to within 30 degrees of the equator, the feedback would be unstoppable and the Earth would quickly freeze over. Although Budyko did not believe that this had ever happened, he postulated that a loss of atmospheric carbon dioxide , for example if severe weathering of silicate rocks sucked up the carbon dioxide, coupled with a sun that was 6% dimmer than today, could have resulted in widespread glaciation .

Budyko became increasingly interested in the relationships between global climate and organisms and human activities. In Climate and Life, published in 1971, he argued that mass extinctions were caused by climatic changes, particularly those resulting from volcanic activity or meteorite collisions with the Earth. These would send clouds of particles into the stratosphere , blocking sunlight and lowering global temperatures. In the early 1980s Budyko warned that nuclear war could have a similar effect, precipitating a "nuclear winter" and threatening humans with extinction .

By studying the composition of the atmosphere during various geological eras, Budyko confirmed that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, such as those caused by volcanic activity, were major factors in earlier periods of global warming. In 1972, when many scientists were predicting climate cooling, Budyko announced that fossil fuel consumption was raising the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which, in turn, was raising average global temperatures. He predicted that the average air temperature, which had been rising since the first half of the twentieth century, might rise another 5°F (3°C) over the next 100 years. Budyko has since been examining the potential effects of global warming on rivers, lakes, and ground water, on twenty-first-century food production, on the geographical distribution of vegetation, and on energy consumption.

The author and editor of numerous articles and books, in 1964 Budyko became a corresponding member of the Division of Earth Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In 1992 he was appointed academician in the Division of Oceanology, Atmosphere Physics, and Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His many awards include the Lenin National Prize in 1958, the Gold Medal of the World Meteorological Organization in 1987, the A. P. Vinogradov Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1989, and the A. A. Grigoryev Prize of the Academy of Sciences in 1995. Budyko was awarded the Robert E. Horton Medal of the American Geophysical Union in 1994, for outstanding contribution to geophysical aspects of hydrology . In 1998 Dr. Budyko won the Blue Planet Prize of the Asahi Glass Foundation of Japan.

[Margaret Alic ]

RESOURCES

BOOKS

Andronova, Natalia G. "Budyko, Mikhail Ivanovich." In Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change, edited by Ted Munn, vol. 1. New York: Wiley, 2002.

Budyko, M. I., G. S. Golitsyn, and Y. A. Izrael. Global Climatic Catastrophes. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1988.

Budyko, M. I. and Y. A. Izrael., eds. Anthropogenic Climatic Change. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1991.

Budyko, M. I., A. B. Ronov, and A. L. Yanshin.History of the Earth's Atmosphere. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1987.

OTHER

Budyko, Mikhail I. "Global Climate Warming and its Consequence." Blue Planet Prize 1998 Commemorative Lectures . Ecology Symphony. October 30, 1998 [cited May 23, 2002]. <www.ecology.or.jp/special/9902e.html>,

Hoffman, Paul F. and Daniel P. Schrag. "Snowball Earth." Scientific American January 2000 [cited May 24, 2002]. <www.sciam.com/2000/0100issue/0100hoffman.html>.

"Dr. Mikhail I. Budyko." Profiles of the 1998 Blue Planet Prize Recipients. The Asahi Glass Foundation. 2001 [cited May 23, 2002]. <www.af-info.or.jp/eng/honor/hot/enr-budyko.html>.

ORGANIZATIONS

State Hydrological Institute, 23 Second Line VO, St. Petersburg, Russia 199053.