The Weather Experiment by Moore
Ref: Peter Moore (7 Aper, 2016). The Weather Experiment, The Pioneers Who Sought to See the Future. Vintage Publishing.
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Summary
Religious dogma stifled meteorology for centuries. The weather was a potent symbol of divine vengeance and mercy, and central to the Creation story: the antediluvian paradise of Eden, the Flood, the covenant of the first rainbow. Storms were the ultimate example of God’s might. As Psalm 29 asserted, God did not just direct the weather, he was the weather. The voice of the Lord is upon the waters: the God of glory thundereth: the Lord is upon many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.
Meteorology: The study of things on high.
Meteor: Any event that happened in the so-called sublunar zone, the uncertain territory between the earth and the moon; “Any bodies in the air or sky that are of a flux and transitory nature (Dr. Johnson, 1755).” Defined a variety of phenomena that ranged from a shooting star to the appearance of a rainbow; the onset of a storm or a solar halo, a flash of lightning or a gust of wind.
Forging a coherent pact between science, politics and economics will be one of the challenges of our age.
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Atmosphere
Atmospheric Layers: Exosphere, thermosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere, troposphere.
Blue Sky: The blue is the scattering of sunlight as it strikes against air molecules or other particles as it passes through the atmosphere. Each collision splits the white light into its constituent colors – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet – but it does not do so evenly. Every color has a distinct wavelength – the highest, red, at 710nm, the lowest is violet at 400nm. The molecules in our atmosphere are more effective at scattering low-wavelength light like violet, indigo or blue. As the human eye has not evolved strong sensitivity to violet, which is the dominant tint in the sky, we see a vaulted blue space above us.
Beaufort Scale: 0- Calm, 1- Faint breeze just not a calm, 2- Light Air, 3- Light Breeze, 4- Gentle Breeze, 5- Moderate Breeze, 6- Fresh Breeze, 7- Gentle Steady Gale, 8- Moderate Gale, 9- Brisk Gale, 10- Fresh Gale, 11- Hard Gale, 12- Hard gale with heavy gusts, 13- Storm.
Cyclones (‘coil of a snake’- Greek) and anticyclones; (aka Sirocco, helm wind, simoon, Sumatra’s) complementary opposing forces that transfer air around a global circulatory system.
Cyclones: Suck Air inwards and blow it out of the top.
Anticyclones: Push air outwards and down towards the ground.
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Storms
Warm damp air rises upwards towards cooler, drier altitudes, in the atmosphere. This is because atmospheric air – which is mostly formed of N and O atoms – becomes lighter when H2O vapor molecules are mixed with it. As H2O vapor is chiefly comprised of H, the lightest of all elements, it means that the damper a parcel of air, the lighter it will be and the faster it will rise.
Warm Air Rises: Warm damp air travels upwards at speeds upwards of ~2m/s towards cooler air. The temperature drops at around 1C/100m (the dry adiabatic lapse rate). H2O vapor continues rising until air temperature reaches the dew point.
Warm air is less dense than cold air and will also rise. Anyone can observe this in their own home, opening the bathroom door after a shower and feeling the warm air escape upwards while cold air rushes in below.
Condensation: At the dew point, H2O vapor condenses on minute cloud condensation nuclei (salt, dust, Ammonium Nitrate), often only 1/10000th of a mm across. It can take billions of collisions for water vapor molecules to stick to a condensation nucleus; often they bounce off, yet little by little the particles accumulate and droplet, 1/100th of a mm in diameter is formed.
Cloud Formation: Droplets coalesce, as much as 100M per m3, creating a cumulus cloud. They form at a fixed altitude, their flat bases tracing a dew- point line across the sky.
Clouds: The cloud has a short life. The droplets of water are heavy enough to fall – the average cumulus cloud is one km3 in size and, if gathered together, weighs more than 500 tons– they are kept in a state of delicate stasis by wind resistance and updraughts of rising air.
Storms: As the cloud base begins to thicken, strong convective currents propel parcels of moist air higher into the atmosphere where they start to sublime into ice crystals, coalescing into fast growing cumulonimbus clouds. In the right conditions a cumulonimbus capillatus can tower for many miles over the landscape, its anvil top scraping along the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere.
Hail: In supercooled air inside the cumulonimbus, ice crystals extend outwards in an enormous canopy. Raindrops are sucked inside the cloud by powerful updrafts from below and sent see-sawing up and down, creating concentric rings of ice that tumble to earth as hail.
Rain Shower: Ice crystals high in the cumulonimbus fall straight, melting as they descend in the warmer air below, starting a rain shower.
Rainbow: As raindrops fall, they pass through a shaft of sunlight, refracting it. Someone on the ground standing with their back to the sun will see a rainbow at an angle of 42°. A second bow is almost always visible over the primary rainbow, at an angle of 51°.
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Climate Change
Should the atmosphere continue to fill with increasing volumes of greenhouse gases, before the end of the twenty-first century we will find temperatures rising between 3° and 5°C, with sea levels up by half to one meter.
Democrat-leaning news programmes have been found to use the term ‘climate change’ while their Republican opponents have preferred ‘global warming’.
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Weather Lore
If the Sun rise red and fiery – Wind and Rain Clouds like Rocks and Towers – Great Showers Clouds Small and round, like a Dapple-grey, with a North-Wind – Fair Weather for 2- or 3-Days Mists. If they rise in low Ground and soon vanish – Fair Weather.
Rain is foreshadowed by aches and pains in the human body or toothache; ants bustling over their anthills carrying eggs; asses braying in the fields; cattle gamboling; candles flaring.
Fine weather is foreshadowed when larks flew high.
Thunderstorms were presaged by milk suddenly turning sour.
An east wind gave the nervous ‘headaches and hurrying dreams.’
A fine day is presaged when there is a piece of blue sky seen in a rainy day big enough “to make a Dutchman a pair of breeches.”
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People
Vilhelm Bjerknes (1862-1951): Norwegian professor, established forecasting on a sound statistical footing.
Francis Galton (1822-1911): Victorian polymath. Notable in meteorology for identifying and coining the term ‘anticyclone’. Also pioneered methods of mapping the weather from 1860 onwards, culminating in The Times’ first ever weather map in 1875. Professional rival of Robert FitzRoy.
John Tyndall (1820-1893): Popular Victorian physicist; demonstrated in the early 1860s that some gases were capable of retaining more heat than others, a phenomenon later called the Greenhouse Effect.
Tyndall realized that for the earth to be hot enough to support life some of the gases had to trap and retain some of the sun’s heat. Tyndall spent two years testing which gases were the strongest absorbers of radiant heat (what we call today IR radiation). He constructed an apparatus at the British Institution, a rig which let him pass heat through tubes of gas and monitor the amount of absorption. Tyndall found that a negligible amount of heat was absorbed by the typical atmospheric gases: O, H, N. However, “other gases had dramatic absorptive capacity including H2O vapor and Carbonic Acid (CO2 in this case).” The more water vapor, carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ present in the atmosphere, the warmer the atmosphere would be.
Buys Ballot (1817-1890): Postulated Buys Ballots Law: ‘If you stand with your back to the wind in the Northern Hemisphere, air pressure will be lower to your left.’ Buys Ballot issued the word’s first governmental storm warning, using the electric telegraph and an analysis of barometric data to calculate the expected force of the coming wind.
William Ferrel (1817-1891): American teacher and meteorologist from Nashville who successfully applied the laws of earth’s rotation to the standing theories of atmospheric circulation in the 1850s. The Ferrel Cell – one of three great atmospheric cells of air circulation – is named in his honour.
In ‘Winds and Currents of the Ocean’, Ferrel explained why the wind should twist around the center of a storm. He demonstrated that this was caused by the rotary motion of the earth, which deflected air moving towards a center of low-pressure giving rise to a picture of atmospheric circulation. Ferrel based his calculations on the work of a French mathematician Gustave Coriolis, who had calculated the deflective effect of the earth’s rotation.
Elias Loomis (1811-1889): American mathematician, meteorologist and astronomer, for many years a professor at Yale College. The inventor of the synoptic map; in 1834 was one of the first Americans to observe Halley’s Comet. Worked extensively on a December 1836 storm and pioneered early, color-coded weather maps.
Instead of concluding that air was then drawn up an invisible chimney at the point of collision, Loomis felt that it was more likely that the cold wind rushed underneath the warmer wind like a door wedge. The wind, Loomis continued, varies ‘not merely from day to day, and from hour to hour, but from minute to minute, and from second to second’. This made any study of it incredibly difficult and any analysis equally troublesome. To express this, he added several charts at the end of his paper. They were drawn at six-hourly intervals, showing the progression of a storm with lines of equal barometric pressure.
Urbain Le Verrier (1811-1877): French geometer, mathematician and scientific administrator. Became famous for his discovery of Neptune by mathematical calculation in 1846 and, later, for being the autocratic successor to Arago at the Paris Observatory. Steered French meteorological efforts from the mid-1850s. Le Verrier’s showed the power of mathematics. It could be harnessed to inform spending by the government, to track criminals, to conquer disease.
James Glaisher (1809-1903): Astronomer, meteorologist, photographer and balloonist. Glaisher’s meteorological career began in 1840 when he was appointed Superintendent of the Magnetical and Meteorological Department at the Greenwich Observatory. He wrote many papers, notably on dew and snowflakes and broke the world altitude record for a balloon flight with Henry Coxwell in 1861. President of the Meteorological Society in 1867–8.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882): The father of evolutionary theory, popularized in his book “On the Origin of Species.”
Matthew Maury (1806-1873): Lieutenant in the United States Navy, oceanographer and administrator. From the 1840s onwards distilled meteorological data into his sailing charts, earning him the nickname ‘Pathfinder of the Seas’. Encouraged European nations to follow America’s lead at the Brussels conference of 1853.
Robert FitzRoy (1805-1865): Darwin’s Captain on the HMS Beagle; FitzRoy started the first weather forecasts, what he had earlier termed, synoptic charts showing pressure, temperature, and geography (synoptic was borrowed from the name of the Synoptic Gospels- Matthew, Mark and Luke). FitzRoy was one of the youngest officers in Whitehall, in its twelve years of existence FitzRoy had established a marine network, conceived and published his wind star charts and his Barometer and Weather Guide, founded a telegraphic network, launched a storm-warning system, become the world’s first ever governmental forecaster, written his Weather Book and pioneered meteorological relationships with other European powers – chiefly Le Verrier at the Paris Observatory.
FitzRoy had his own distinct charisma. He didn’t inspire with bravado or buccaneering showmanship; he led by example. The men respected his ability, hard work and even-handedness. His character was a singular one, with his many noble features: he was devoted to his duty, generous to a fault, bold, determined, and indomitably energetic, and an ardent friend to all under his sway. He would undertake any sort of trouble to assist those whom he thought deserved assistance.
Beaufort asked FitzRoy to keep a careful meteorological register, with twice-daily barometric and temperature readings.
Heinrich Dove (1803-1879): Prussian meteorologist and winner of the Royal Society’s prestigious Copley Medal in 1853 for research on the distribution of heat in the atmosphere. FitzRoy had Dove’s Law of Storms translated into English in the 1850s, and Dove’s ideas on conflicting air masses underpinned much of the early forecasting method.
George Airy (1801-1892): British mathematician and Astronomer Royal from 1835-1881. A key figure in Victorian science who pioneered meteorological data collection at Greenwich with James Glaisher in the 1840s and encouraged the first weather reports of the Daily News.
Henry Piddington (1797-1858): Captain in the East India Company (EIC) and meteorologist who became interested in storm physics in the 1840s. A follower of Redfield and Reid, he published The Sailor’s Horn Book for the Law of Storms in 1848.
Joseph Henry (1797-1878): Leading American scientist, first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and famously the inventor of the doorbell. Made many contributions to science, particularly in electromagnetism, and led the Smithsonian Meteorological Project from the 1840s onwards.
Sir John Herschel (1792-1871): Famous British scientist and administrator. Made many contributions to astronomy and mathematics and retained an interest in meteorology. Supported Redfield’s theory of circular winds and later corresponded with FitzRoy on the mathematics of rainbows, landscape art and lunisolar theory.
Morse (1791-1872): An American inventor and painter. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, Morse contributed to the invention of a single wire telegraph system. To counter the problem of weaking current in his telegraph wire, Morse invented a relay system of circuits using the electromagnetic charge of the current to open and close subsequent circuits.
Dr. Jackson, speaking to Morse and Rives about electricity, recounted his experience of a memorable experiment at the Sorbonne where he had watched as an electric spark fizzed 400x about the great lecture hall in an instant. Morse’s recollection of this conversation was to remain with him for the rest of his life. Another passenger then asked whether a lengthy wire would obstruct the passage of an electric current. Jackson replied, ‘No, Benjamin Franklin has demonstrated long ago in London that electricity travels at once through any length of wire.’ ‘I then remarked,’ Morse remembered, ‘if the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity.’
Denison Olmstead (1791-1859): Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Yale.
William Reid (1791-1858): British Army officer and colonial administrator. Became interested in meteorological science following the hurricane of 1831. Spent many years collecting data on West Indian storms and was influenced by Redfield. Published his Law of Storms in 1838. Later a governor of various British Overseas Territories, remembered by Dickens as ‘The Good Governor’.
While all the storms Reid studied in the N. hemisphere blew in an anticlockwise direction, he believed all those in the S. hemisphere revolved in the opposite way. His theories were collated in his book “An Attempt to Develop the Law of Storms,” a highly practical work crammed with expert research. It included tips for mariners, accounts of exemplary storms, and cut-out diagrams, charts and real-time maps for reference in a storm.
Charles Babbage (1791-1871): Reduced all problems to mathematical formulas and built an analytical engine to solve logical problems.
John Frederic Daniell (1790-1845): Professor of Chemistry at King’s College London, his Meteorological Essays of 1823 were popular. Invented the Daniell Hygrometer and Daniell cell battery – which became a vital component of Morse’s telegraph. Died at a meeting of the Royal Society in March 1845, halfway through a description of the new water barometer.
Thomas Forster (1789-1860): English naturalist, astronomer, meteorologist and physician. His 1813 book, Researches About Atmospheric Phenomena, was perhaps the most popular meteorological work of the early nineteenth century and attracted a wide readership that included John Constable and François Arago. Forster had a particular interest in natural weather signs and he published many lists of them throughout his career. He made a memorable balloon ascent in 1831.
William Redfield (1789-1857): American businessman and meteorologist. His Remarks on the Prevailing Storms of the Atlantic Coast, of the N. American States, published in 1831, introduced the US scientific community to the idea of inward-spiraling winds and began a decade of storm analysis. Friend and ally of William Reid, he went on to be the first President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Redfield is commonly acknowledged as the first to lobby for the telegraph to be harnessed by meteorology.
Redfield noticed that near Middletown, in the center of the state, trees had been blown over towards the NW. But in neighboring Mass. the trees had fallen in the opposite direction, pointing towards the SE. Redfield took this as proof that in just 70 miles the winds had reversed direction. To check his facts, he had collected newspaper reports and soon had sketched the path of the storm. It was then that ‘the idea flashed upon his mind that the storm was a progressive whirlwind’.
Redfield explained the LP reading that accompanied the center of a storm and demonstrated why the barometer should rise in the moments before it arrived. The whole mechanics of a storm could be reproduced in any house in America at any time, with apparatus no more sophisticated than a cup of water and a spoon.
François Arago (1786-1853): Influential French mathematician and astronomer, Director of the Paris Observatory from 1843-1853. His Meteorological Essays, chiefly dealing with lightning was translated into English by Edward Sabine in 1855.
James P. Espy (1785-1860): Maverick American meteorologist, classicist and mathematician. Strongly advocated his atmospheric chimney model of air circulation, much to the annoyance of his great rival William C. Redfield. Later became notorious for claims about making rain.
Espy realized that the sudden liberation of water vapors ‘latent caloric’ (heat) explained how the clouds expanded outwards and formed distinct shapes. He conceived an atmospheric vision of invisible columns of air rising upwards like modern-day fuel pumps to feed the clouds with condensing water vapor. This process completed a vital link in what we today call the hydrological cycle. He had shown that the atmosphere was not bound together by an electrical field or agitated into action by fumes. Instead he had discovered that it functioned according to strict mathematical principles, with water vapor the essential component in a circulatory system – like blood being pumped around the human body.
Sir Francis Beaufort (1774-1857): Hydrographer, scientist, sailor and éminence grise. Author of the first widely adopted wind and weather scale; mentor to Robert FitzRoy. Beaufort journaled the passing weather on HMS Latona in 1791 and again on HMS Aquilon in 1792, detailing the day of the week, the date, the wind, course, distance, lat, long, and place where bearing was taken.
Beaufort was remarkable for his skill in observation – he would later dub it a ‘hobby or insanity’ – and also for the breadth of his knowledge. He sifted books, gathering facts like a magpie, building up a vast floating library. He read in English, French and Latin and added notes in Greek and Italian.
Luke Howard (1772-1864): British pharmacist and Quaker, widely considered the father of modern meteorology. Achieved fame in the early 19c for his cloud-classification system but went on to publish many other meteorological works. Credited with first describing the urban heat island effect and pioneering climatic studies with his Climate of London.
Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859): Prussian explorer who pioneered the idea of the outdoor scientist. A great influence on Robert FitzRoy and Charles Darwin during their voyages on HMS Beagle. Distilled his great scientific knowledge into his book Kosmos, which was translated into English in 1845.
John Dalton (1766-1844): Quaker, weather diarist and schoolmaster; began recording his own weather data in 1787 using home-made instruments. Published his Meteorological Observations and Essays in 1793, speculating on the nature of matter and atoms, the beginning of modern atomic theory.
James Capper (1743-1825): British Army officer and employee of the East India Company (EIC). Credited by William Reid as the first to argue that storms had a circular motion, his ideas were not popularized in his lifetime.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790): Celebrated US philosopher of the 18c. Notable in meteorology for flying a kite in a Philadelphia thunderstorm and drawing sparks out of the sky, proving that lightning was an electrical phenomenon. He also pioneered the study of storms, tracking their progression up the US east coast.
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Misc Quotes
For twilight to properly end and night begin, the sun must be 19° beneath the horizon.
Asphyxia steals away the life of the human being as he moves above, suspended in mid-air, as stealthily as cold does that of the mountain traveller, who, benumbed and insensible to suffering, yields to the lethargy of approaching sleep, and reposes to wake no more.-James Glaisher.
(In one of the most triumphant and understated sentences in all Victorian science, he turned back to his desk) ‘I resumed my observations at 2h 7m, recording the barometer reading at 11.53”, and temperature -2°.’-James Glaisher.
(Origin began) ‘a marked epoch in my own mental development, as it did in that of human thought generally. Its effect was to demolish a multitude of dogmatic barriers by a single stroke, and to arouse a spirit of rebellion against all ancient authorities whose positive and unauthenticated statements were contradicted by modern science.’-Charles Darwin.
Amid superstition, science can never flourish.
(Glad the high ascents were now over he wrote) ‘The limit is plainly five miles. Whenever eleven inches is reached – prudence says – open the valve.’-James Glaisher to Fitzroy.
Those who never run any risk; who only sail when the wind is fair; who heave to when approaching land, though perhaps a day’s sail distant; and who even delay the performance of urgent duties until they can be done easily and quite safely; are, doubtless, extremely prudent persons: but rather unlike those officers whose names will never be forgotten while England has a navy.-Robert FitzRoy.
‘The natural tendency of men is to undervalue what they cannot understand.-Beaufort.
I shall not strike you but consider yourself horsewhipped!-Captain FitzRoy.
You cannot force an idea upon people, they have to learn with explanation, story and narrative. ‘The Truth must dazzle gradually, Or every man be blind’.-Emily Dickinson.
The use of vague phraseology has a tendency to make those who use it satisfied with uncertain conclusions.
"Should it be that a scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections – a mere heart of stone?"-Charles Darwin.
In the 1820s, one of the great ways to dazzle the opposite sex was to talk of the stars or the planets.
We see nothing truly till we understand it.-Constable.
It was he who taught me that true education begins but with the resolution to improve, and it was he alone of all my friends who tried to wind me up to that resolution and sustain it.
May it be a new era of industrious and zealous efforts to do my duty with sincerity, impartiality and suavity.
Tell All the Truth But Tell It Slant: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant— Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind.-Emily Dickinson on Faith (~1867).
Men who derive their knowledge entirely from Experience are apt to despise what they call Book Learning, and Men of great Reading are apt to fall into a less excusable mistake, that of taking the Knowledge of Words for the Knowledge of Things.-Campbell.
‘No sound knowledge can exist, but that based on observation and experiment, which either rests immediately on facts, or is reduced from them by mathematical reasoning.’-Edinburgh Review (1838).
René Descartes’ vision of mathesis universalis – the total understanding of nature through mathematics.
Turning to Huxley he rounded off with a last, savage blow. Was it on his grandfather’s or grandmother’s side, Wilberforce demanded, that he was descended from an ape? Huxley’s reply would go down in history for its audacity. [Whether] I would rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence, and yet who employs these faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion – I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.-Huxley to Wilberforce.
Warning has always been given by nature, and if man is heedless, he must take the consequences.
For men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession, and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their reason, to the benefit and use of men: … [science is] a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate.
‘Nullius in verba’: Take nobody’s word for it; motto of the Royal Society of London.
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Chronology
Sep, 2013: The UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states “95% of scientists now agree that global warming is happening.” In their notes for policy- makers, the IPCC declare that ‘warming of the climate system is unequivocal’.-Weather by Moore.
1988: Margaret Thatcher gives an anxious address on global warming to the Royal Society.-Weather by Moore.
1896: Publication of the International Cloud Atlas, which assigns the number 9 to Cumulonimbus clouds; “to be on cloud nine.”-Weather by Moore.
1875: The first daily weather map appears in The Times, drawn by Francis Galton.-Weather by Moore.
1 Aug, 1861: FitzRoy’s storm warning system data is expanded to 130 different locations and is first sent to newspapers. It read: General weather probably for the next two days in the – North – Moderate westerly wind; fine. West – Moderate south-westerly; fine. South – Fresh westerly; fine.-Weather by Moore.
7 Feb, 1861: FitzRoy issues the first ever British storm warning.-Weather by Moore.
9 Sep-29 Oct, 1860: Physicist John Tyndall studies which gases are the strongest absorbers of radiant heat (IR Radiation). Tyndall found that a negligible amount of heat was absorbed by the typical atmospheric gases: O, H, N. However, “other gases had dramatic absorptive capacity including H2O vapor and Carbonic Acid (CO2 in this case).” The implications of Tyndall’s discoveries were clear. The more water vapor, carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ present in the atmosphere, the warmer the atmosphere would be.-Weather by Moore.
1 Jun, 1860: The word’s first governmental storm warning is issued by Buys Ballot, using the electric telegraph and an analysis of barometric data to calculate the expected force of the coming wind.-Weather by Moore.
1859: Publication of Darwin's ‘On the Origin of Species.’-Weather by Moore.
1854: The term ‘Forecast’ is coined by FitzRoy; ‘Prophecies and predictions they are not – the term forecast is strictly applicable to such an opinion as is the result of scientific combination and calculation’.-Weather by Moore.
8 Aug, 1851: Glaisher publishes the first British Daily Weather Map from data sourced by Telegraph.-Weather by Moore.
1850: Britain connects electronically with Europe after 50km of line ‘the thickness of a little finger’ is completed between Dover and Cap Gris Nez. Messages could now be fired from London to Paris, Berlin or Milan in seconds.-Weather by Moore.
Jul, 1849: As Loomis had done in America, Glaisher begins plotting data on an outline map of the British Isles.-Weather by Moore.
Summer, 1848: The first British weather reports are issued by Glaisher after being asked by an editor to study ‘rainy and inclement weather’ threatening the harvest.-Weather by Moore.
1848: The Sailors Horn Book for the Law of Storms is published by Henry Piddington, bringing the theory of circular winds to a mass market and suggesting the name ‘cyclone’.-Weather by Moore.
Sep, 1846: Neptune is discovered by the Berlin Observatory; while studying ‘perturbations’ in the orbit of Uranus, Frenchmen Urbain Le Verrier used geometry to ask them to examine a point in the night sky at a specific location.-Weather by Moore.
Aug, 1846: The Smithsonian Institution opens under in Washington, DC by act of the USG.-Weather by Moore.
3 Mar, 1843: The USG grants Samuel Morse $30K to fund a test line of ‘the Electro Magnetic Telegraph’ between DC and Baltimore.-Weather by Moore.
1843: Epsy becomes the first ever official meteorologist after overseeing a USC grant of $3K to study the weather at military posts throughout the USA.-Weather by Moore.
28 Dec, 1838: The Beaufort Scale is adopted by the British Admiralty for naval use.-Weather by Moore.
1838: The Law of Storms is published by William Reid.-Weather by Moore.
1837: “Influential Climate of London” & “Seven Lectures on Meteorology” are published by Luke Howard.-Weather by Moore.
1834: Hailey Comet orbits near Earth.-Weather by Moore.
1831: Remarks on the Prevailing Storms of the Atlantic Coast is published by William Redfield, introducing the US scientific community to the idea of inward-spiraling winds.-Weather by Moore.
1827: A Pocket Encyclopedia on Natural Weather signs is published by Thomas Forster.-Weather by Moore.
1820s: Belgian astronomer in Paris, Adolphe Quetelet, applies the error law, typically used for determining the position of stars in the night sky, to all sorts of social phenomena from crimes to health, and over time the error law acquired its modern name ‘standard deviation’.-Weather by Moore.
1813: Researches about Atmospheric Phenomena is published by Thomas Forster, one of the most popular meteorological work of the early 19c.-Weather by Moore.
13 Jan, 1806: Introduction of the Beaufort Wind Scale by Beaufort.-Weather by Moore.
Dec, 1802: Luke Howard presents the first classification system of the clouds to the Askesian Society in London.-Weather by Moore.
1793: Meteorological Observations and Essays is published by John Dalton, in which he begins to speculate on the nature of matter and atoms, the beginning of modern atomic theory.-Weather by Moore.
18 Aug, 1769: Lightning strikes Brescia’s tower of the church of St. Nazaire igniting ~2M lbs of gunpowder leveling a sixth of the city and killing 3K.-Weather by Moore.
1768: The HMS Endeavour sets sail for the South Seas under the command of Capt. Sir James Cook.-Weather by Moore.
1755: The Dictionary of the English Language is published by Dr. Johnson.-Weather by Moore.
1686: The first meteorological map is published by Edmund Halley, who plotted the trade winds on the globe.-Weather by Moore.
1518: Spanish King Philip I orders his ‘Grande y Felicísima Armada’ with 130 ships and 30K men under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia to invade and conquer protestant England.-Weather by Moore.
Sep, 1518: The Spanish Armada feels along the E. English Coast, planning to loop around Scotland and sail S. towards Spain. Miscalculating their longitude, the fleet turned S. too soon with many ships abandoned to the jagged coast of N. and W. Ireland.-Weather by Moore.
Aug, 1518: The Armada is caught in skirmishes and clandestine attacks by the British.-Weather by Moore.
Jul, 1518: The Armada is mauled by English battleships off Plymouth.-Weather by Moore.
May, 1518: The Armada sets sail.-Weather by Moore.
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