Elmer Robinson (meteorologist)
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Elmer Robinson (October 3, 1924 - April 24, 2016) was an American
atmospheric scientist Atmospheric science is the study of the Atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere and its various inner-working physical processes. Meteorology includes atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric physics with a major focus on weather forecasting. Climat ...
. He was one of the first scientists to recognise climate-change risks in fossil fuel burning, co-authoring, with R C Robbins, another
Stanford Research Institute SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic ...
(SRI) researcher, reports warning the industry in 1968 and 1969.


Early life

Robinson was born in Los Angeles, California, to Homer Henry Robinson and Mary Luella White. He attended Hoover High School in Glendale and went on to take BS and MS degrees at
University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...
(UCLA).


Career

Robinson joined SRI as a climate researcher in 1947 and continued on there until taking up a professorship at the University of Washington State University in 1972 where he remained until 1985. In his capacity as leading environmental scientist at SRI in 1968, his report on global warming entitled ''Sources, abundance, and fate of gaseous atmospheric pollutants'' was presented to the
American Petroleum Institute The American Petroleum Institute (API) is the largest U.S. trade association for the oil and natural gas industry. It claims to represent nearly 600 corporations involved in production, refinement, distribution, and many other aspects of the ...
(API). In the report, he warned that rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere "may be the cause of serious world-wide environmental changes", a warning elaborated on in a 1969 supplement to the report. Also while at SRI, Robinson carried out ice-core studies of historical atmospheric concentrations on cores taken in Greenland and surveyed the ozone layer depletion over Antarctica. He was director of the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...
's Mauna Loa Research Observatory in Hawaii from 1985 to 1996, a role in which he was interviewed for '' National Geographic'' in 1987.Noel Grove,
Air: An Atmosphere of Uncertainty
, ''National Geographic'' (April 1987).


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Robinson, Elmer American atmospheric scientists National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration personnel SRI International people University of California, Los Angeles alumni Washington State University faculty 1924 births 2016 deaths