Dick Reed has made highly original and substantive research contributions to the field of meteorology in a career that has spanned more than five decades. His pioneering research on upper-level fronts and upper-level frontogenesis by means of detailed case studies, and his interpretation of his findings from a dynamical perspective using potential vorticity (PV) conservation concepts have proved to be especially enlightening. Particularly important was his deduction of the three dimensional circulations associated with upper-level fronts out of which came an appreciation for the role that subsidence along the warm boundary of the upper-level frontal zone played in frontogenesis and how this same subsidence could result in the folding of stratospheric air into the troposphere.

The purpose of this talk is threefold: (1) to delineate Dick Reed's seminal contributions to the subject of upper-level fronts and frontogenesis, and associated tropopause folding, (2) to show how the results of Dick Reed's research on these and related subjects has stimulated new research directions and opportunities through theoretical, observational, and numerical investigations of the structure and life cycles of upper-level fronts and cyclones, and (3) to report on a very recent analysis of an historical case of upper-level frontogenesis that occurred atypically in southwesterly flow aloft (8-10 December 1978). The focus of the talk will be on the "big picture". Emphasis will be placed on how the introduction of important scientific concepts and methodologies, and the associated findings from Dick Reed's earlier work on upper-level frontogenesis and tropopause folding, has triggered, and continues to trigger, a wealth of new scientific studies on cyclone life cycles and frontal phenomena from a PV perspective.