PHOTO: GETTY X4, ALAMY X2, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
circa 50 BC
The Tower of the
Winds is built in
Athens. Each wall of
this octagonal building
bears an image of one
of the Ancient Greek
wind deities.1843
Elias Loomis presents
his paper On Two
Storms Which Occurred
In February 1842. It
includes the first
developed, colour-coded
weather charts.1913
Shortly after beginning
work at the Eskdalemuir
Observatory, Lewis Fry
Richardson has his grand
idea of a ‘forecasting
factory’, with human
computers performing
the role of machines.1861
Two years after the Royal Charter steam clipper
is sunk in a powerful storm, Robert FitzRoy
issues Britain’s first telegraphed storm warnings
and weather forecasts.1944
Perhaps the most significant weather forecast in
history is issued by Group Captain James Stagg on
6 June (D-Day). He identifies a break in the stormy
conditions that allows the Allied invasion fleet to
cross the Channel.2014
A $137m computer is
ordered for the Met
Office. It has 120,000
times more memory
than a top-end
smartphone and can
process enormous
amounts of data.WILLIAM REDFIELD
(1789-1857)
This New York businessman studies
storms in the 1820s and 1830s,
demonstrating that they all operated to the
same scientific principles. He later
becomes the first president of the
American Association for the
Advancement of Science.ROBERT FITZROY
(1805-1865)
In the 1830s, FitzRoy
captains the HMS
Beagle. In 1854 he
becomes head of the
Meteorological
Department in London – later the Met
Office – where he constructs the world’s
first forecasting system.VILHELM BJERKNES
(1862-1951)
This Norwegian physicist founds the Bergen
School in 1917, with the aim of unifying
meteorology and putting the subject on a
firm theoretical footing. He mentors many
influential meteorologists, including his son
Jacob Bjerknes, Halvor Solberg and
Carl-Gustaf Rossby.LEWIS FRY RICHARDSON
(1881-1953)
This English mathematician comes to
meteorology in 1913 with his
appointment as superintendent of the
Eskdalemuir Observatory in Scotland.
During the next decade, he carries
out pioneering work into numerical
weather prediction.EDWARD LORENZ
(1917-2008)
In 1961, this US meteorologist runs
a forecasting model on his Royal
McBee LGP-30 computer when he
notices that a tiny change to input
numbers creates a huge
discrepancy in the outcome. He
calls it ‘chaos theory’.1913 1861184319442014C.50
BCWe have been fascinated by the weather for centuries. But it is only relatively recently that
our knowledge has moved from folklore to scienceTIMELINE: WEATHER FORECASTS