Prologue: Tropical Meteorology 1960–2010—Personal Recollections

Abstract

me consists of some papers presented at the AMS Symposium held to honor the memory of the late Professor Michio Yanai as well as additional works inspired by his research. By the nature of this volume, many of the contributed papers describe the development of tropical meteorology over the past half-century or so in connection with Professor Yanai?s influence on it. While most of the chapters address specific areas and discuss timely issues, in this prologue I will describe some of Professor Yanai?s contributions during the early period of his career from my own point of view. As this is a personal reminiscence, I would like to emphasize how Professor Yanai influenced me.Both Professor Yanai and I became graduate students at the University of Tokyo to begin our career as meteorologists in 1956 and 1957, respectively. Since we studied and worked together so closely for a long time, in this article I will call him Yanai-san as I have done in our personal interactions.