Concepts
Jet Stream
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A narrow band of very fast, high-altitude westerly wind, typically found near the tropopause where cold polar air meets warmer air to the south, strong enough to cut hours off an eastbound flight and add them to a westbound one. Pilots crossing the Pacific during the Second World War were among the first to report winds of the strength now known, though the Japanese meteorologist Wasaburo Oishi had tracked similar high-altitude currents by pilot balloon in the 1920s, publishing in Esperanto to a readership that mostly missed it. The theoretical account of how such jets form, tied to the same air-mass boundaries the Bergen School mapped at the surface, came together over the following decades.
Facts
Disputed
Proposed ByCredited variously; Wasaburo Oishi is often named as first scientific discoverer 1 Sourced to the subject's own accountMultiple figures are credited across different eras: Elias Loomis hypothesized a strong upper-air current in the 19th century, Wasaburo Oishi tracked it near Mount Fuji in the 1920s but published in Esperanto so the work went largely unnoticed outside Japan, Wiley Post drew attention in 1933, Heinrich Seilkopf coined a German name in 1939, and understanding was cemented by Allied pilots during World War Two. No single proposer is agreed on. Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
1. Jet Stream (Wikipedia)
WikipediaHistory sectionQuote, History section
In the 1920s Japanese meteorologist Wasaburo Oishi detected the jet stream from a site near Mount Fuji.
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