Unlike the horrible devastation that was wreaked by the recent earthquake and tsunami, tropical cyclones - hurricanes and typhoons - no longer surprise humankind, with their devastating winds and storm surge. This is due, in a very large part, to a single invention by the American meteorologist Vern Dvorak.

In the 1970s, during the early era of satellite meteorology, Dvorak realised that from the perspective provided by geostationary satellites, one could continually monitor the position and intensity of tropical cyclones globally. Dvorak developed an accurate, reproducible methodology to systematically obtain the location and peak windspeeds from satellite imagery, via pattern recognition.

The use of Dvorak's invention quickly spread throughout the global tropics, and became crucial for timely and precise tropical cyclone warnings, to get people out of harm's way. It is no exaggeration to say that the Dvorak technique has been responsible for saving millions of lives during the past 30 years. What is also amazing is the durability of this scheme, in that it has proven to be unsurpassed by other methods in three decades, despite improvements in satellite remote sensing capabilities.

Dvorak was recognised in May 2004, at the American Meteorological Society's Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology Conference in Florida, with a special session on '30 years of the Dvorak technique'. Dvorak's work is certain still to be utilised in the near future, and will become even more crucial to the tropical cyclone warning programmes, because of the vastly increasing coastal populations in the tropics. Dvorak's accomplishment is a wonderful example of a technological advance that is directly responsible for improving the lives of so many people on Earth today.

See Christopher Landsea's website.