Ted Fujita

Japanese-born scientist and educator

• Born: October 23, 1920
• Place of Birth: Kitakyushu City, Kyushu, Japan
• Died: November 19, 1998
• Place of Death: Chicago, Illinois

Highly respected as an observer and researcher, Japanese American Ted Fujita greatly advanced the science of meteorology in both his native and his adopted countries. He meticulously studied atmospheric systems and made many discoveries regarding tornadoes and hurricanes that have aided weather forecasting.

Full Name: Tetsuya Theodore Fujita (TEH-tsu-yah THEE-oh-door FOO-jee-tah)

Areas of achievement: Science and technology; education

Early Life

Tetsuya Theodore Fujita was born in Kitakyushu City, Kyushu, Japan, on October 23, 1920, the first son of schoolteachers Tomojiro Fujita and Yoshie Kanesue Fujita. Even as a child, Fujita was fascinated by science and nature. He took great interest in rocks and minerals, was awed by volcanoes, and enjoyed exploring caves. When he came of age, Fujita enrolled as a mechanical engineering major at Meiji College, part of Kyushu Institute of Technology. Though his father (in 1939) and his mother (in 1941) both died during his college years, Fujita persisted in his education, acquiring particular skill in drawing topographical maps while earning a BS in 1943.

After graduation, Fujita was hired at the institute as a physics teacher and lab instructor. Following the end of World War II, he led his students in a project to examine damage from the atomic bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From his analysis of the sites he developed elaborate maps of the damage caused by the blast and the wind-borne patterns of fallout, which piqued his curiosity enough to further explore the causes and effects of weather.

In 1946, Fujita received a government educational grant to study weather science and teach instructors about weather. Fujita used the funding to observe thunderstorms from a mountaintop weather station. He recorded winds, temperatures, lightning bursts, and barometric pressures, during which time he became an expert on the structure and behavior of thunderheads. In 1948, Fujita surveyed the ruin caused by a rare tornado that devastated a village on Kyushu Island and mapped its path of destruction. He followed the same exacting techniques over a three-year period in analyzing the aftereffects of typhoons that slammed into Japan.

Soon afterward, Fujita began describing his research in lectures to the national weather service and published his findings in scholarly papers that he translated into English. He became aware of American efforts—particularly the Thunderstorm Project, conducted by Dr. Horace Byers at the University of Chicago—that paralleled his own research, and began a correspondence with Byers. Meanwhile, Fujita earned his doctoral degree in 1953 from Tokyo University.

Life’s Work

Soon after achieving his doctorate, Fujita was invited to work alongside Byers as a meteorological research assistant in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Chicago. He was able to accept the position in 1955, after fulfilling his teaching contract in Japan.

In the United States, Fujita, now going by the name Ted, became a pioneer in what would become known as “mesoanalysis”—the study of the dynamics of midrange convective atmospheric systems in terms of duration (usually a day or less) and geographical scope (up to 1,200 miles, but typically confined to a much smaller area). The objective of the scientific discipline is to closely observe the patterns of weather phenomena in order to assist the forecasting of often brief, violent, and unpredictable localized storms, in an effort to help prevent property damage and human injury.

Fujita’s initial weather research in the United States surrounded the examination of the lifecycles of tornadoes, from formation to dissipation. Between the mid-1950s and early 1980s, he studied—through photographs, eyewitness accounts, and flyovers tracking the paths of destruction—numerous property-destroying, fatal tornadoes that ravaged America’s Midwest from North Dakota to Texas. In the course of his work, he discovered many properties of atmospheric phenomena that greatly contributed to scientific understanding of how and why some storms are more destructive than others.

One of Fujita’s areas of concentration between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s led directly to significant changes at American airports. In closely observing storms, he detected what came to be called “down bursts”: areas of cool air created in rain clouds that caused sudden high-velocity downdrafts. Between 1976 and 1978, he headed Northern Illinois Meteorological Research on Downburst (Project NIMROD) and afterward participated in Colorado’s Joint Airport Wind Shear (JAWS) Project. From his investigation of airliner crashes in New York, New Orleans, and Dallas–Fort Worth, Fujita detected a particular type of downburst now known as a microburst—dramatic, small-scale streams of rapidly descending air gusting up to 150 miles per hour—which had probably been the culprit in the disasters. Microburst wind shear had the power to catastrophically affect the takeoffs and landings of any airplanes unfortunate enough to be in its path. As a result of Fujita’s recommendations, Doppler radar equipment to detect downbursts became standard at airports and has since saved countless passenger lives.

Later in his career, Fujita expanded the scope of his research to larger, more far-ranging weather systems. Using techniques developed in his mesoanalysis studies, he investigated damage patterns of hurricanes, particularly the highly destructive storms Alicia (1983), Hugo (1989), and Andrew (1992).

In 1988, Fujita was appointed director of the University of Chicago’s Wind Research Laboratory, and the following year he was named Charles Merriam Distinguished Service Professor at the university. Fujita—who became a naturalized American citizen in 1968—eventually succumbed to complications of diabetes at age seventy-eight.

Significance

A true meteorological detective, Fujita, through his tireless research, contributed greatly to the world’s knowledge of weather, particularly in understanding the complex composition and behavior of severe mid-scale storm systems. He introduced many of the concepts and much of the terminology—including “wall clouds,” “tail clouds,” “multiple vortexes,” “downburst,” “microburst,” and “wind shear”—now common to meteorology. One of his longest-lasting legacies is his creation in 1972 of the Fujita Scale, also known as the F-Scale, which correlated wind speed with damage. In 2007, this was updated with new engineering data into the Enhanced F-Scale under the auspices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Another enduring contribution is the multitude of students Fujita taught, many of whom are now well-respected meteorologists in their own right.

As a measure of the esteem in which his colleagues held him, the American Meteorological Society’s 2000 symposium, “The Mystery of Severe Storms,” was a posthumous tribute to Fujita’s lifelong work. Michigan State University’s Department of Geological Sciences likewise recognized his contributions. The National Weather Association named the T. Theodore Fujita Research Achievement Award in his memory.

Bibliography

Bamzai, Anjuli S. "Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month Spotlight: Dr. Tetsuya 'Ted' Fujita." American Meteorological Society Blog, 6 May 2024, blog.ametsoc.org/2024/05/06/asian-american-and-pacific-islander-heritage-month-spotlight-dr-tetsuya-ted-fujita/. Accessed 19 Aug. 2024.

Cox, John D. Storm Watchers: The Turbulent History of Weather Prediction from Franklin’s Kite to El Nino. Hoboken: Wiley, 2002. Print.

Fujita, Tetsuya Theodore. Tornado Damage at the Grand Gulf, Mississippi Nuclear Power Plant Site: Aerial and Ground Surveys. Washington, DC: Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 1978. Print.

Mathis, Nancy. Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado. New York: Touchstone, 2008. Print.