Mikhail Budyko

Soviet-Russian climatologist (1920 – 2001)

Mikhail Ivanovich Budyko (20 January 1920 – 10 December 2001) was a Soviet and Russian climatologist and one of the founders of physical climatology. He pioneered studies on global climate and calculated the temperature of Earth using a simple physical model of equilibrium in which the incoming solar radiation absorbed by the Earth's system is balanced by the energy re-radiated to space as thermal energy. Budyko's groundbreaking book, Heat Balance of the Earth's Surface (Тепловой баланс земной поверхности), published in 1956, transformed climatology from a qualitative into a quantitative physical science.

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