Fritz Möller (16 May 1906, in Rudolstadt – 21 March 1983, in Munich) was a German meteorologist, geophysicist and high school teacher. He was a pioneer in radiation research and satellite meteorology.

Life

Möller's eponymous father was the director of the hospital in

Rudolstadt Rudolstadt is a town in the German federal state Thuringia, within the Thuringian Forest, to the southwest, and to Jena and Weimar to the north. The former capital of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, the town is built along the River Saale inside a wide ...

. Möller received a degree in Geophysics and Meteorology at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...

in 1924 and joined the Corps Thuringia Jena that same year. In 1925 he attended the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, receiving his doctorate in 1928. From 1934, he worked as a meteorologist at the

Frankfurt airport Frankfurt Airport ( ) , is Germany's busiest international airport by passenger numbers, located in Frankfurt, Germany's fifth-largest city. Its official name according to the German Aeronautical Information Publication is Frankfurt Main Airpor ...

, and then in the new Reich Office Weather Service from 1935 to 1938. After 1938 he taught at the University of Frankfurt and the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

Mainz and Munich

The new

University of Mainz The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz () is a public research university in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany. It has been named after the printer Johannes Gutenberg since 1946. it had approximately 32,000 students enrolled in around 100 a ...

appointed Möller a professor in 1948. This institute was instrumental in international radiation research. Until retirement in 1972, he headed the Meteorological Institute and the Institute of Meteorology and Climatology in Munich. In 1962, he was appointed Chair for Theoretical Meteorology.

Climate modeling

With the introduction of the computer, meteorologists in the United States began numerical experiments to develop quantitative measurement methods to study circulation and climate of the earth. In 1959 and 1960, Möller came to the United States to work with

Syukuro Manabe is a Japanese– American physicist, meteorologist, and climatologist, who pioneered the use of computers to simulate global climate change and natural climate variations. He was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Klaus Has ...

on the numerical determination of radiative fluxes. Möller's second visit to the United States was the evaluation of measurement data from meteorological satellites. He was the only German belonging to the governing body of the Global Atmospheric Research Program. In 1963, he published a paper in the

Journal of Geophysical Research The ''Journal of Geophysical Research'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal. It is the flagship journal of the American Geophysical Union. It contains original research on the physical, chemical, and biological processes that contribute to the u ...

which purported to disprove

Gilbert Plass Gilbert Norman Plass (March 22, 1920 – March 1, 2004) was a Canadian physicist who in the 1950s made predictions about the increase in global atmospheric carbon dioxide () levels in the 20th century and its effect on the average temperature of ...

's influential 1953 article on the warming influence of industrial carbon dioxide. Although his model of carbon dioxide-water vapor feedback produced inconsistent results because it ignored certain physical processes such as

atmospheric convection Atmospheric convection is the vertical transport of heat and moisture in the atmosphere. It occurs when warmer, less dense air rises, while cooler, denser air sinks. This process is driven by parcel-environment instability, meaning that a "par ...

, he encouraged other researchers (notably Manabe and Wetherald in 1967) to develop more reliable

climate models Numerical climate models (or climate system models) are mathematical models that can simulate the interactions of important drivers of climate. These drivers are the atmosphere, oceans, land surface and ice. Scientists use climate models to stu ...

Honors

* Honorary doctorate from the University of Mainz * Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (1959) * President of the International Association for Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics (IAMAP) (1959-1967) * Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (1962)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Moller, Fritz 1906 births 1983 deaths German climatologists German meteorologists University of Göttingen alumni