miles. There was no theory to
account for this.
A decade later Redfield published
one of the classic texts in the history of
meteorology, Remarks On The
Prevailing Stor ms Of The Atlantic
Coast. Based on a decade’s
contemplation and research, he
unveiled his idea that stor ms were not
simply chaos, but progressive and
orderly ‘giant whirlwinds’ that f lew
along storm paths. He illustrated his
arguments with examples of
hurricanes forming in the Atlantic and
skimming along eastern coast of the
US, showing how the winds twisted
anticlockwise about a central vortex as
they went. For the first time, people
could visualise the storm from above.
Redfield’s ideas rejuvenated the
study of meteorology, suggesting to
others that the atmosphere was a
puzzle that might be solved. Over
the following decades his work was
refined in a series of important
contributions. US meteorologist
James P Espy demonstrated
mathematically how clouds were
formed from columns of rising air
(now cal led ther mals), which
reached a certain altitude before
releasing their latent heat. English
scientist and merchant captain
Henry Piddington proposed that the
word ‘cyclone’ should be adopted as
a standard name for Redfield’s
whirlwinds. Armed with this new
sense of how air was moving, the
Dutch meteorologist Buys Ballot
coined his law in 1857: “In the
northern hemisphere, if a person
stands with his back to the wind, the
atmospheric pressure is low to the
left, high to the right.” This is
because wind travels anticlockwise
around low pressure zones.
This jolt for wards in theor y
dovetailed with two vital
technological innovations. The first
was a weather map. Thoughseemingly an obvious tool, none
existed until the early 19th Century.
One of the first attempts was made
by US professor Elias Loomis. His
map showed weather over the US
during a storm on 3 February 1842.
He sourced data from across the
countr y, then drew lines of equal
pressure – forerunners to today’s
isobars – as well as wind direction
and weather type.
Of greater significance was the
invention of the electromagnetic
telegraph, meaning data could be
quickly transmitted across massive
geographic areas. Soon, Redfield
was lobbying in the American
Journal Of Science for telegraphed
weather reports, and this vision
was made a reality in 1848, when
London’s Daily News became the
first paper to publish
telegraphically sourced weather
dispatches in real time.The first forecaster
Before long, these advances were
being turned to practical use by
Robert FitzRoy, the remarkable
head of the newly formed
Meteorological Department in
London. From the moment of his
appointment, FitzRoy was a man in
a hurry. He established a weather
network on the British coast. He
formulated a new grid system for
plotting histor ical weather data over
a geographic space, called ‘wind
stars’. And he improved upon
Loomis’s weather map.
But FitzRoy’s real interest lay in
prediction. After a vicious autumnal
gale in 1859 and the wreck of a gold-
laden ship, The Royal Charter,
FitzRoy seized his chance. He won
government support for his storm
warning system. It meant sourcing
weather data from about 20 stations
on the coast, analysing it in
London, then spotting a storm ifHOW DO WE KNOW...
HOW TO FORECAST WEATHER?Artist’s impression of
Lewis Richardson
Fry’s weather
forecasting factoryILLUSTRATION: STEPHEN CONLINTHE KEY EXPERIMENTScientist: Lewis Fry Richardson
Date: 1922
Aim: To predict the weatherLewis Fry Richardson dreamed of
setting up a forecasting factory and
so he resolved to establish an
experiment to test his idea. He
sourced a set of sound meteorological
data from 20 May 1910 and set out to
complete a full working example of a
mathematical forecast for his book
Weather Prediction By Numerical
Means.
At this point, WWI intervened.
Richardson was a Quaker and a
pacifist and so refused to enlist.
Instead he volunteered for the Friends’
Ambulance Service and was sent to
the Western Front in France. There, in
snatched hours over a six-week
period between his medical duties, he
worked on the meteorological
calculations for 20 May 1910. Later, he
wrote that his office was “a heap of
hay in a cold, wet rest billet”. At one
point, Richardson’s entire manuscript
was lost during a battle, but it
emerged again some months later
underneath a heap of coal.
The results of Richardson’s
forecasting experiment were
published in 1922. Ostensibly his
effort was a failure. He had forecast a
“large and erroneous rise in pressure
by 145 millibars”, but this had not
materialised in reality. Regardless,
Richardson published the details of
his experiment, providing future
scientists with a model. Today, the
sort of calculations that Richardson
worked on in the trenches form a
fundamental part of forecasting
science.HISTORY