ORGANIZED METEOROLOGY
No other branch of science is so dependent upon the constant systematic
cooperation of a multitude of workers as meteorology. There are, to
be sure, some kinds of atmospheric phenomena that can be studied
advantageously by the individual meteorologist, with no further aid
from his scientific confrères than the same sort of interchange of
ideas that prevails in all departments of knowledge; but the widespread
processes that constitute weather and climate require for their
observation--whether the purpose in view be weather forecasting, or
the collection of climatic statistics, or the assembling of data from
which to deduce the laws of atmospheric movements--a veritable army of
colaborers, equipped with standardized instruments and keeping their
records according to a uniform plan.
Probably few people, in looking at the charts portraying the climates
of the world that are found in reference books, realize how many
observers have contributed to the preparation of such charts or the
number of separate instrumental observations upon which they are
based. In the United States alone there are something like 6,000
meteorological stations, at which upward of two and a quarter million
observations are made every year--and a climatic chart is, of course,
the fruit of _many_ years of observations. At the beginning of the
present century it was estimated that there were 31,000 meteorological
stations in operation throughout the world. The present number is
doubtless much greater. At some of these stations observations have
been made regularly, once, twice or three times a day, for 100 or 150
years. In round numbers one may say that, during the last few decades,
meteorological observations have been made, the world over, at the
rate of ten million a year, and the total number, since the keeping of
regular weather records began, runs far up in the hundred millions.
Organized meteorological observations were not unknown to antiquity--we
have mentioned elsewhere the early rainfall measurements in India and
Palestine--but the present era of such undertakings dates back only
to the middle of the seventeenth century. In the year 1654 the Grand
Duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany, through his chaplain and secretary,
Luigi Antinori, secured the cooperation of several observers in Italy
and the adjacent countries, to whom were distributed instruments and
forms for maintaining daily records of the principal meteorological
elements. Antinori and most of the observers belonged to the Jesuits,
an order which has displayed extraordinary zeal in the furtherance of
meteorology down to the present day. The observations thus inaugurated
appear to have been kept up until about 1667, but unfortunately few
of the records have been preserved. Several undertakings of similar
character were launched during the next hundred years in France,
England, and Germany. The most notable of such enterprises, however,
antedating the foundation of the present official weather services,
was the international system of observations maintained by the
Meteorological Society of the Palatinate, founded at Mannheim in
1780 under the auspices of the Elector Karl Theodor. The chief credit
for the epoch-making work of this society is due to its secretary,
J. J. Hemmer. The society distributed standard instruments to its
observers, who were widely scattered over the world; viz., fourteen in
Germany, two in Austria-Hungary, two in Switzerland, four in Italy,
three in France, four in Belgium and Holland, three in Russia, four in
Scandinavia, one in Greenland, and two in North America (at Bradford
and Cambridge, Mass.). The very detailed observations of this network
of stations down to the year 1792 were published in twelve large
volumes.
Although the activities of the Mannheim society came to an end in
the troublous days of the French Revolution, the records that it had
collected served as the groundwork for fruitful studies during the next
generation. There are two distinct uses that can be made of statistics
of this sort. First, they can be digested in such a way as to bring out
the characteristic features of the climate at each of the localities
included in the collection, and likewise to illustrate the distribution
of climates over the globe. Second, the data for individual days from
the various stations can be charted separately, so as to illustrate the
_instantaneous_ distribution of barometric pressure, wind and weather,
and, by a comparison of the charts for successive days, to provide a
sort of moving picture of the atmospheric machinery in operation.
Charts based on approximately simultaneous observations showing
the state of the atmosphere at a particular moment of time over an
extensive area of the earth are called _synchronous charts_, or
sometimes _synoptic charts_, though the latter term is also applicable
to charts showing average values for a particular month, year, etc.
Synchronous charts, as used nowadays for the purpose of making
forecasts, are prepared from data collected by telegraph; but the
same kind of charts can be prepared in a more leisurely manner from
the statistics gathered at any previous time, and such charts were
frequently made for the purpose of study before the days of telegraphy.
The pioneer in such undertakings was the German physicist, H. W.
Brandes, who, about 1820, utilized the observations collected by the
Meteorological Society of the Palatinate, together with some others, in
compiling a series of daily synchronous charts of Europe for the year
1783.
Very similar studies were carried out in America, a few years later, by
J. P. Espy, W. C. Redfield and Elias Loomis. Early in the nineteenth
century a copious fund of meteorological observations had already
accumulated in this country. The first undertaking in the nature of a
meteorological organization, foreshadowing the present Weather Bureau,
was due to Josiah Meigs, Commissioner of the General Land Office, who
in 1817 established a system of tri-daily observations at the various
land offices. At an almost equally early period the Surgeon General of
the Army inaugurated regular weather observations at the military posts
throughout the country. Local systems of observations were established
by the authorities of New York State in 1825 and Pennsylvania in
1837, and systems of broader scope by the Patent Office in 1841
and the Smithsonian Institution in 1847. Experiments in collecting
weather reports by telegraph for the purpose of forecasting storms
were undertaken by the Smithsonian Institution as early as 1849. At
about the same period Lieut. M. F. Maury, of the navy, was gathering
meteorological reports from mariners and laying the foundations of
marine meteorology. Finally, in 1870, Congress was induced to establish
a full-fledged telegraphic weather service, similar to those that were
already in successful operation in Europe. One of the great promoters
of this enterprise was Dr. I. A. Lapham of Wisconsin; it had been
repeatedly advocated by Maury; and a convincing object lesson in its
behalf was furnished by the local service of reports and forecasts
conducted by Prof. Cleveland Abbe, at the Cincinnati Observatory, with
the aid of the Western Union Telegraph Company, in 1869 and 1870.
During the first twenty years of its existence, from 1870 to 1890, the
Federal weather service was under the Signal Corps of the army. Since
1890 it has been a branch of the Department of Agriculture, as the
United States Weather Bureau, though the name “Signal Service” stuck to
it, in popular speech, long after it ceased to belong to the army.
In this country weather forecasts are--or once were--said to emanate
from “Old Probabilities,” or “Old Probs.” Our first “Old Probs” appears
to have been Professor Abbe, who has explained the origin of this name
in an account of his pioneer forecasting experiments at Cincinnati. He
says of the initial Cincinnati Weather Bulletin, issued September 1,
1869:
“It contained only a few observations telegraphed from distant
observers and announced ‘probabilities’ for the next day. This
bulletin, in my own hand-writing, was posted prominently in the hall of
the Chamber of Commerce, but unfortunately I had misspelled ‘Tuesday,’
and I soon found below my Probabilities the following humorous line
by Mr. Davis, the well-known packer: ‘A bad spell of weather for “Old
Probs.”’ This established my future very popular name of ‘Old Probs.’”
The name has, however, been more particularly associated with Gen.
Albert J. Myer, who, as Chief Signal Officer, was the first head of the
Federal meteorological service.
Desultory experiments in the collection of current weather reports and
their use in constructing weather maps were first carried out in Europe
at about the same time as the early undertakings of this character in
America. Such reports were gathered and published by James Glaisher,
with the cooperation of the British railways, in 1849. The existing
national weather services of the Old World owe their origin to an
episode of the Crimean War. In November, 1854, a violent storm wrought
havoc among the French and British warships in the Black Sea and sank
many vessels containing invaluable stores intended for the Allied
armies in the Crimea. The French astronomer Le Verrier, director of
the Observatory of Paris, collected information showing the progress
of this storm across Europe, and the results of this inquiry were so
significant that he submitted to the Emperor Napoleon III the plan of
organizing an international system of telegraphic reports, by means
of which timely warning could be obtained of similar atmospheric
disturbances. The French Government, with the aid of other European
countries, established such a system in 1855. Within the next two
decades most of these countries organized their own services, and at
the same time maintained an international exchange of observations by
telegraph. Before the close of the nineteenth century nearly all the
civilized countries of the world, including many colonial possessions,
such as Canada, Australia, Algeria and the Philippines, had established
meteorological services, entailing more or less extensive arrangements
for collecting daily reports by telegraph and issuing storm warnings
and weather forecasts. The chief exceptions were several of the
Latin-American republics and the Ottoman Empire, in which such
organizations are still lacking.
Meteorology is essentially an _international_ science. The atmosphere
knows no political boundaries, and the more it is studied the more
strongly meteorologists are impressed with the fact that intimate
relations exist between the atmospheric events of widely separated
regions of the world. Thus, the great anticyclone that is built up
every year over the cold interior of Siberia exercises an influence
upon the weather of the United States; the behavior of the Indian
monsoons has been found to have some connection with barometric
conditions in South America; and fluctuations in the force of the
trade winds are apparently of world-wide significance--whence these
winds have been described as the “pulse” of the general atmospheric
circulation. The French meteorologist L. Teisserenc de Bort called
attention many years ago to the existence of what he called “centers
of action”; viz., large permanent or semi-permanent areas of high and
low barometric pressure, the variations of which correspond strikingly
with the vicissitudes of wind and weather in countries thousands of
miles distant. Last but not least, persistent attempts have been made
to interpret all the weather happenings on our globe in terms of a
fluctuating supply of radiant energy received from the sun.
Fortunately meteorology has possessed an international organization
for a great many years. The International Meteorological Organization
was founded at a conference held at Leipzig in 1872, and was perfected
at a formal congress of meteorologists convoked at Vienna in the
following year. The International Meteorological Committee, which is
the permanent working body of the organization, was established at
the Vienna Congress. Finally, the organization was reconstituted at a
conference held at Paris, by invitation of the French Government, in
1919.
The International Committee consists of not more than twenty members,
all of whom are directors of official meteorological services. It
is supposed to meet at least once in three years. At less frequent
intervals are held “conferences,” to which are invited representatives
of all the meteorological services and the principal independent
meteorological observatories of the world. Attached to the organization
are several international “commissions,” which supervise and coordinate
the work of meteorologists in various special fields. At the close of
the year 1921 there were commissions on the following subjects:
Agricultural Meteorology, Weather Telegraphy, Marine Meteorology,
Solar Radiation, Application of Meteorology to Aerial Navigation,
Réseau Mondial, and Polar Meteorology, Investigation of the Upper Air,
Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity, Study of Clouds.
Each commission includes in its membership at least one member of the
International Committee, besides a number of experts, from different
countries, in the particular subject with which the commission is
concerned.
The resolutions adopted at the various international meetings of
meteorologists have been collected in the “International Meteorological
Codex,” the chief object of which is to secure uniformity in methods of
observation, forms of publication, etc.
One of the most notable international undertakings in the history of
meteorology was the plan of simultaneous observations, at Greenwich
noon, both at land stations and on board ships, adopted by the Vienna
Congress at the suggestion of General Myer, and carried out under
the auspices and mainly at the expense of the United States Signal
Service. The results of these daily observations, from 1875 to 1887,
were published in detail, with charts, by the Signal Service. The many
bulky volumes of this series, illustrating the meteorology of the globe
(or mainly the northern hemisphere) day by day for a period of more
than a decade, are the modern analogue of the “Ephemerides” issued a
century earlier by the Meteorological Society of the Palatinate--which
cover very nearly the same length of time. In recent years the efforts
of meteorologists have been bent toward establishing a so-called
“réseau mondial,” or world-wide network of stations, which will not
only provide telegraphic reports for the use of forecasters, but will
also send their detailed records to an international commission to be
compiled and published. The telegraphic feature of this project now
bids fair to be realized in a manner that was not contemplated when the
plan was originally proposed; viz., by the broadcasting of weather
reports from high-powered radio stations all over the world.
An effective “world weather bureau,” with permanent headquarters
and staff, is at present the most urgent desideratum of practical
meteorology. Such a bureau would not only tie together the national
weather services of the world and greatly facilitate their operations,
but would also digest the great mass of existing climatic statistics
and provide for extending the climatological survey of the globe to
regions where meteorological stations are scarce or lacking.
A typical national meteorological service comprises a central station
or institute, usually, but not always, situated at the national
capital, and a network or “réseau” of subordinate stations, which are
sometimes classified, according to the extent of their observations,
as stations of the first, second, and third order. They may also
be classified, from another point of view, as telegraphic and
nontelegraphic stations. The former provide telegraphic reports of
their observations, which serve as the foundation for forecasts, while
the latter are maintained chiefly for the purposes of climatology. In
some countries--notably in the United States--there are additional
classes of stations engaged in particular lines of work; these include
storm-warning stations, river stations (which report river stages and
rainfall in the river basins), stations for agricultural meteorology,
etc. Several of the great maritime nations collect reports from vessels
on the high seas, including a small percentage of wireless reports. A
number of the national meteorological services carry on work in other
branches of geophysics, such as seismology and terrestrial magnetism.
The United States Weather Bureau is an exception to the rule that,
apart from the central offices and a few special stations and large
observatories, meteorological stations are not generally manned by
professional meteorologists, nor are the observers paid specifically
for their meteorological work, though in a great many cases they
are public functionaries who are expected to take meteorological
observations in addition to their other duties. In this country there
are about 200 stations at which the observers, of whom there are from
one to a dozen or more at each station, devote all their time to the
work of the stations and are salaried employees of the Weather Bureau,
and there are several hundred minor stations manned by part-time paid
employees. But even in the United States the great majority of the
meteorological stations are operated by unpaid observers. There are
about 4,500 of these so-called “cooperative stations,” which provide
the bulk of the climatic statistics of the country.
Some of the leading meteorological services of the world, and the
places at which their central offices are located, are as follows:
United States Weather Bureau (Washington), Meteorological Service of
Canada (Toronto), Meteorological Office (London), Office National
Météorologique (Paris), Reale Ufficio Centrale di Meteorologia e
Geodinamica (Rome), Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik
(Vienna), Indian Meteorological Department (Simla), Central
Meteorological Observatory (Tokyo), Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology
(Melbourne), Oficina Meteorológica Argentina (Buenos Aires).
In Germany there are several mutually independent meteorological
establishments, of which the Prussian Meteorological Institute,
with headquarters in Berlin, is the most important with respect to
climatology and research, while the Deutsche Seewarte, at Hamburg,
is the chief center for telegraphic weather reports and issues the
principal weather map. Russia, before her debacle, had one of the
most splendidly organized meteorological services in the world, with
headquarters at the Central Physical Observatory in Petrograd, and a
separate service for agricultural meteorology, which was the model
institution of its kind. The Philippine Islands have a Weather Bureau
which is entirely distinct from that of the United States. This Bureau,
with headquarters at the Manila Observatory, was founded by the
Jesuits, who also maintain a quasi-official meteorological service in
China, with headquarters at the Zikawei Observatory, near Shanghai.
Many meteorological societies have done much for the progress of the
science, and in some cases have shared the duties of the official
meteorological services, especially in maintaining stations for
climatology. These include the Royal Meteorological Society and the
former Scottish Meteorological Society, in Great Britain, the French,
Italian, German, Austrian, and Japanese meteorological societies, and
the American Meteorological Society, which was founded in December,
1919.