weather prediction as head of the Meteorological Research Group. Together with noted mathematician John von Neumann, Charney helped pioneer the use of computers and numerical techniques to improve weather forecasting, and played a leading role in efforts to integrate sea-air exchanges of energy and moisture into the study of climate. This collective work paved the way for the founding of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. In 1954, Charney helped create the Joint Numerical Weather Prediction Unit, a collaboration between the U.S. Weather Bureau, Air Force, and Navy. Charney would later serve as a member of the Committee on Atmospheric Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences and as chairman of the academy's Committee on International Meteorological Cooperation. In those roles, he conceived and helped organize the Global Atmospheric Research Program, considered the most ambitious international effort in weather research ever undertaken. Dynamic meteorology and oceanography In 1956, Charney left IAS to become a professor of meteorology and director of the Atmospheric and Ocean Dynamics Project at MIT, where for 25 years he contributed major contributions in dynamic meteorology and oceanography research, including large-scale atmospheric turbulence, feedback interactions between the oceans and atmosphere, the persistence of certain abnormal flow patterns in the atmosphere, and the relationship of such phenomena to droughts. Among his many fundamental contributions to the field, Charney identified “baroclinic instability,” the first convincing physical explanation for the development of mid-latitude cyclones. Charney identified the mechanism that explains the size, structure, and growth rate of mid-latitude weather systems, and is a ubiquitous phenomenon in rotating, stratified fluids like our oceans and atmosphere. From 1974 to 1977, Charney headed the meteorology department at MIT. In addition to his revolutionizing research, Charney is remembered as a charismatic and optimistic professor among former students from MIT, where he remained until his death in 1981. Students describe falling into “orbit around the Charney sun.” There is a library named in Charney's honor in the building that holds the MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheres and Planetary Sciences. Charney Report In 1979, Charney chaired an "ad hoc study group on carbon dioxide and climate" for the National Research Council. The resulting 22-page report, "Carbon dioxide and climate: A scientific assessment," is one of the earliest modern scientific assessments about global warming. Its main conclusion can be found on page 2: "We estimate the most probable global warming for a doubling of CO2 to be near