If you’ve studied hydrology or climate science, you’ve probably come across the Budyko curve, or the Budyko Framework. Soviet climatologist Mikhail Ivanovich Budyko published what is now the well known Budyko curve, a conceptual model describing the relationship between the water and energy balances of a catchment or region. It has been hotly debated for decades and scientists still write hundreds of papers about it every year.

I was curious about the original source for this. Some sources report it as Budyko’s Book Water for Life, published by UNESCO in 1974. However, the original publication predates this by almost 20 years. And I was surprised to find it, of all places, on the website of the CIA!

I cleaned up the PDF by cropping the pages, running character recognition, and compressing the images. You’ll find the famous Budyko curve at the top of page 74 in the book (page X in the PDF).

Citation:
Budyko, M. I. (1956). Teplovoĭ Balans Zemnoĭ Poverkhnosti (Heat Balance of the Earth’s Surface). Gidrometeorologischeskoe izdatel’stvo (Hydrometeorological Publishing House), Leningrad, USSR (Translated by N. A. Stepanova, U.S. Weather Bureau, 1958, 259 pages).

If you enjoyed adding this classic to your library, consider buying me a coffee. 🙂