"[7][8] Charney's work also influenced that of his close colleague Edward Lorenz, who explored the limitations of predictability and was a pioneer of the field of chaos theory.

[11][9] His Ph.D. dissertation, titled “The Dynamics of Long Waves in a Baroclinic Westerly Current” comprised the entire October 1947 issue of the Journal of Meteorology.

In 1946, Charney became a research associate at the University of Chicago under Carl-Gustav Rossby, a Swedish-born American meteorologist whose theories of large-scale air movements helped revolutionize meteorology.

Charney's quasi-geostrophic vorticity equations allowed for concise mathematical description of large-scale atmospheric and oceanic circulations, enabling future numerical weather prediction work.

In 1948, Charney joined the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, to explore the feasibility of applying digital computers to weather prediction as head of the Meteorological Research Group.

Together with noted mathematician John von Neumann, Charney helped pioneer the use of computers and numerical techniques to improve weather forecasting, and played a leading role in efforts to integrate sea-air exchanges of energy and moisture into the study of climate.

Charney identified the mechanism that explains the size, structure, and growth rate of mid-latitude weather systems, and is a ubiquitous phenomenon in rotating, stratified fluids like our oceans and atmosphere.

[19] The American Meteorological Society annual presents the "Jule G. Charney Award" to individuals "in recognition of highly significant research or development achievement in the atmospheric or hydrologic sciences".