BBC_Knowledge_Asia_Edition_-_May_2016_

he could. If bad weather was

detected, a message was

relayed to the relevant station, and a

drum was hoisted in the harbour

in warning.

Within months, FitzRoy’s

scheme had evolved into general

weather predictions for the two

days ahead. The first of these

‘forecasts’ appeared on 1 August

1861. They ran for several years,
      and turned FitzRoy into a
      celebrity. Queen Victoria herself
      requested personalised forecasts
      when she crossed to the Isle of
      Wight, while to others he became
      known as the ‘Clerk of the
      Weather’. But with few staff, an
      enormous workload and a hostile
      press, FitzRoy’s work was always
      fraught. Exhausted, depressed and
      drowned by his own ambition,
      FitzRoy committed suicide in
      April 1865. His weather forecasts
      went soon after.
      From today’s perspective,
      FitzRoy’s attempts at forecasting
      were noble yet f lawed. Many more
      observations were needed for system
      that he envisioned. The first glimpse
      of modern forecasting methods
      would not appear until the start of
      the 20th Century, in the Norwegian
      town of Bergen.
      The Bergen School holds a pre-
      eminent place in the history of
      meteorology. It was founded in
      1917 by physicist and
      meteorologist Vilhelm Bjerknes
      and then developed by his son
      Jacob Bjerknes and a list of
      brilliant others. They sought to
      bring scientific rigour to
      meteorology like never
      before. Their work was
      shaped by WWI
      which, by 1917, had
      deprived Norway of
      access to British
      storm warnings, and
      left it with severe

food shortages. Sensing an

opportunity, Bjerknes approached

the Norwegian government with

an offer to support the nation’s

farmers with meteorology insight.

Bjerknes seized the opportunity

to set up a better observation

network. In western Norway, the

density of meteorological stations

was increased tenfold, with the

resulting data that poured into the

centre in Bergen subject to intense

physical scrutiny. Much of this data

was plotted onto maps, and they

brought a new sophistication to the

old field of large-scale meteorology.

Jacob Bjerknes, in particular,

was inf luential in

defining the anatomy

of Redfield’s cyclones.

In November 1918 he

submitted his

anuscript On The

re Of Moving Cyclones,

g aphically represented

s p oundaries between the

cold and warm air. Soon, these

boundaries would be given the title

of ‘fronts’. The work of the Bergen

School would provide a model for

studying weather systems

throughout the world.

The weather factory

Working at the same time as the

Bergen School was a mathematician

called Lewis Fry Richardson, who

joined the Met Office in 1913.

Soon after his appointment,

Richardson conceived a vision of a

‘forecast factory’ that ran along

mathematic principles. Richardson’s

vision took an architectural form. It

comprised a huge hall, filled with

rows of human computers who were

each responsible for a specific

calculation. Once the ‘computer’

had completed their atmospheric

calculation, they would pass their

work to the next person in the

sequence. The result would be a

mathematically precise weather

HOW DO WE KNOW...

HOW TO FORECAST WEATHER?

Clouds were first

classified in the 19th

Century, with

illustrations like

these appearing in

‘cloud atlases’

The telegraph

revolutionised

weather reporting

as it allowed

meteorologists to

quickly send

information across

vast distances

PHOTO: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, ALAMY

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HISTORY