G. M. B. Dobson

Research and career

In 1913 he became an instructor in meteorology at the Central Flying School, and was at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, from 1916 to 1918. In 1921 he was appointed lecturer in meteorology at the University of Oxford, becoming reader in meteorology in 1927, a position he held until 1950, when he became university demonstrator in physics and climatology. He was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, from 1937 to 1956.

By studying meteorites he noticed that the temperature profile of the tropopause was not constant, as had previously been believed (hence the name stratosphere). In fact there was, he showed, a region where the temperature sharply rose. This, he proposed, was happening because UV radiation was heating ozone in what has become known as the ozone layer.

He noted the connection between sunspots and weather, and measured the ultraviolet levels of our star. He built the first Dobson ozone spectrophotometers and studied the results over many years. The Dobson unit, a unit of measurement of vertically integrated atmospheric ozone density, is named after him. The Brewer-Dobson circulation is a semi-eponymous model of atmospheric currents that explains the distribution of ozone by latitude.