Timeline of meteorology

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Contents

The timeline of meteorology contains events of scientific and technological advancements in the area of atmospheric sciences. The most notable advancements in observational meteorology, weather forecasting, climatology, atmospheric chemistry, and atmospheric physics are listed chronologically. Some historical weather events are included that mark time periods where advancements where made, or even that sparked policy change.

[edit] Early events

Although the term meteorology is used today to describe a subdiscipline of the atmospheric sciences, Aristotle's work is more general. The work touches upon much of what is known as the earth sciences. In his own words:
...all the affections we may call common to air and water, and the kinds and parts of the earth and the affections of its parts.[1]
Aristotle
Aristotle
One of the most impressive achievements in Meteorology is his description of what is now known as the hydrologic cycle:
Now the sun, moving as it does, sets up processes of change and becoming and decay, and by its agency the finest and sweetest water is every day carried up and is dissolved into vapour and rises to the upper region, where it is condensed again by the cold and so returns to the earth.[1]
  • c. 80 AD - In his Lun Heng (論衡; Critical Essays), the Han Dynasty Chinese philosopher Wang Chong (27-97 AD) dispels the Chinese myth of rain coming from the heavens, and states that rain is evaporated from water on the earth into the air and forms clouds, stating that clouds condense into rain and also form dew, and says when the clothes of people in high mountains are moistened, this is because of the air-suspended rain water.[3] However, Wang Chong supports his theory by quoting a similar one of Gongyang Gao's,[3] the latter's commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals compiled in the 2nd century BC,[3] showing that the Chinese conception of rain evaporating and rising to form clouds goes back much farther than Wang Chong. Wang Chong wrote:
As to this coming of rain from the mountains, some hold that the clouds carry the rain with them, dispersing as it is precipitated (and they are right). Clouds and rain are really the same thing. Water evaporating upwards becomes clouds, which condense into rain, or still further into dew.[3]
  • 1088 - In his Dream Pool Essays (梦溪笔谈), the Chinese scientist Shen Kuo wrote vivid descriptions of tornadoes, that rainbows were formed by the shadow of the sun in rain, occurring when the sun would shine upon it, and the curious common phenomena of the effect of lightning that, when striking a house, would merely scorch the walls a bit but completely melt to liquid all metal objects inside.
  • 1441 - King Sejongs son, Prince Munjong, invented the first standardized rain gauge. These were sent throughout the Joseon Dynasty of Korea as an official tool to assess land taxes based upon a farmer's potential harvest.
Anemometers
Anemometers
- Nicolas Cryfts, (Nicolas of Cusa), described the first hair hygrometer to measure humidity. The design was drawn by Leonardo da Vinci, referencing Cryfts design in da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus.[7]
  • 1494 Christopher Columbus experience a tropical cyclone, leads to the first written European account of a hurricane.[8]

[edit] 17th century

Galileo.
Galileo.
  • 1607 - Galileo Galilei constructs a thermoscope. Not only did this device measure temperature, but it represented a paradigm shift. Up to this point, heat and cold were believed to be qualities of Aristotle's elements (fire, water, air, and earth). Note: There is some controversy about who actually built this first thermoscope. There is some evidence for this device being independently built at several different times. This is the era of the first recorded meteorological observations. As there was no standard measurement, they were of little use until the work of Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit and Anders Celsius in the 18th century.
Sir Francis Bacon
Sir Francis Bacon
Blaise Pascal.
Blaise Pascal.
- Edmund Halley establishes the relationship between barometric pressure and height above sea level.[14]

[edit] 18th century

Global circulation as described by Hadley.
Global circulation as described by Hadley.

[edit] 19th century

Synoptic chart from 1874.
Synoptic chart from 1874.
The electrical telegraph owned and built by Samuel Morse.
The electrical telegraph owned and built by Samuel Morse.
  • 1837 - Samuel Morse independently developed an electrical telegraph, an alternative design that was capable of transmitting over long distances using poor quality wire. His assistant, Alfred Vail, developed the Morse code signalling alphabet with Morse. The first electric telegram using this device was sent by Morse on May 24, 1844 from the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. to the B&O Railroad "outer depot" in Baltimore and sent the message:
What hath God wrought
  • 1839 - The first commercial electrical telegraph was constructed by Sir William Fothergill Cooke and entered use on the Great Western Railway. Cooke and Wheatstone patented it in May 1837 as an alarm system.
  • 1841 - Elias Loomis the first person known to attempt to devise a theory on frontal zones, and prepared some of the first known weather maps. The idea of fronts did not catch on until expanded upon by the Norwegians in the years following World War I.[25]
  • 1843 - John James Waterston fully expounds the kinetic theory of gases, but is ridiculed and ignored.
- James Prescott Joule experimentally finds the mechanical equivalent of heat.
- Lucien Vidie invented the aneroid, from Greek meaning without liquid, barometer.
- William John Macquorn Rankine calculates the correct relationship between saturated vapour pressure and temperature using his hypothesis of molecular vortices.
- Rudolf Clausius gives the first clear joint statement of the first and second law of thermodynamics, abandoning the caloric theory, but preserving Carnot's principle.
  • 1852 - Joule and Thomson demonstrate that a rapidly expanding gas cools, later named the Joule-Thomson effect.
  • 1854 - The French astronomer Leverrier showed that a storm in the Black Sea could be followed across Europe and would have been predictable if the telegraph had been used. A service of storm forecasts was established a year later by the Paris Observatory.
- Rankine introduces his thermodynamic function, later identified as entropy.
- After establishment in 1849, 500 U.S. telegraph stations are now making weather observations and submitting them back to the Smithsonian Institution. The observations are later interrupted by the American Civil War.
  • 1865 - Josef Loschmidt applies Maxwell's theory to estimate the number-density of molecules in gases, given observed gas viscosities.
- Manila Observatory founded in the Philippines.[19]
- United States Army Signal Corp, forerunner of the National Weather Service, issues its first hurricane warning.[19]
- The first mention of the term "El Niño" to refer to climate occurs when Captain Camilo Carrilo told the Geographical society congress in Lima that Peruvian sailors named the warm northerly current "El Niño" because it was most noticeable around Christmas.

[edit] 20th century

  • 1902 - Richard Assmann and Léon Teisserenc de Bort, two European scientists, independently discovered the stratosphere.[27]
  • 1904 - Vilhelm Bjerknes presents the vision that forecasting the weather is feasible based on mathematical methods.
  • 1905 - Australian Bureau of Meteorology established by a Meteorology Act to unify existing state meteorological services.
  • 1919 - Norwegian Cyclone Model introduced for the first time in meteorological literature. Marks a revolution in the way the atmosphere is conceived and immediately starts leading to improved forecasts. [28] Sakuhei Fujiwhara is the first to note that hurricanes move with the larger scale flow, and later publishes a paper on the Fujiwara Effect in 1921.[19]
  • 1920 - Milutin Milanković proposes that long term climatic cycles may be due to changes in the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit and changes in the Earth's obliquity.
  • 1922 - Lewis Fry Richardson organises the first numerical weather prediction experiment.
  • 1923 - The oscillation effects of ENSO were first erroneously described by Sir Gilbert Thomas Walker from whom the Walker circulation takes its name; now an important aspect of the Pacific ENSO phenomenon.
  • 1924 - Gilbert Walker first coined the term "Southern Oscillation".
  • 1930 January 30 - Pavel Molchanov invents and launches the first radiosonde. Named "271120", it was released 13:44 Moscow Time in Pavlovsk, USSR from the Main Geophysical Observatory, reached a height of 7.8 kilometers measuring temperature there (-40.7 °C) and sent the first aerological message to the Leningrad Weather Bureau and Moscow Central Forecast Institute.[29]
  • 1935 - IMO decides on the 30 years normal period (1900-1930) to describe the climate.
  • 1937 - The U.S. Army Air Forces Weather Service was established (redesignated in 1946 as AWS-Air Weather Service).
  • 1938 - Guy Stewart Callendar first to propose global warming from carbon dioxide emissions.
  • 1939 - Rossby waves were first identified in the atmosphere by Carl-Gustaf Arvid Rossby who explained their motion. Rossby waves are a subset of inertial waves.
  • 1941 - Pulsed radar network is implemented in England during WWII. Generally during the war, operators started noticing echoes from weather elements such as rain and snow.
  • 1943 - 10 years after flying into the Washington Hoover Airport on mainly instruments during the August 1933 Chesapeake-Potomac hurricane[30], J. B. Duckworth flies his airplane into a Gulf hurricane off the coast of Texas, proving to the military and meteorological community the utility of weather reconnaissance.[19]
  • 1944 - The Great Atlantic Hurricane is caught on radar near the Mid-Atlantic coast, the first such picture noted from the United States.[19]
  • 1947 - The Soviet Union launched its first Long Range Ballistic Rocket 18 October, based on the German rocket A4 (V-2). The photographs demonstrated the immense potential of observing weather from space.[31]
  • 1948 - First correct tornado prediction by R. C. Miller and E. J. Fawbush for tornado in Oklahoma.
- Erik Palmén publishes his findings that hurricanes require surface water temperatures of at least 26°C (80°F) in order to form.
- Hurricanes begin to be named alphabetically with the radio alphabet.
- WMO World Meteorological Organization replaces IMO under the auspice of the United Nations.
- A United States Navy rocket captures a picture of an inland tropical depression near the Texas/Mexico border, which leads to a surprise flood event in New Mexico. This convinces the government to set up a weather satellite program.[19]
- NSSP National Severe Storms Project and NHRP National Hurricane Research Projects established. The Miami office of the United States Weather Bureau is designated the main hurricane warning center for the Atlantic Basin.[19]
The first television image of Earth from space from the TIROS-1 weather satellite.
The first television image of Earth from space from the TIROS-1 weather satellite.
  • 1959 - The first weather satellite, Vanguard 2, was launched on 17 February. It was designed to measure cloud cover, but a poor axis of rotation kept it from collecting a notable amount of useful data.
  • 1960 - The first weather satellite to be considered a success was TIROS-1, launched by NASA on 1 April. TIROS operated for 78 days and proved to be much more successful than Vanguard 2. TIROS paved the way for the Nimbus program, whose technology and findings are the heritage of most of the Earth-observing satellites NASA and NOAA have launched since then.[19]
  • 1961 - Edward Lorenz accidentally discovers Chaos theory when working on numerical weather prediction.
  • 1962 - Keith Browning and Frank Ludlam publish first detailed study of a supercell storm (over Wokingham, UK). Project STORMFURY begins its 10-year project of seeding hurricanes with silver iodide, attempting to weaken the cyclones.[19]
  • 1968 - A hurricane database for Atlantic hurricanes is created for NASA by Charlie Newmann and John Hope, named HURDAT.[19]
  • 1969 - Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale created, used to describe hurricane strength on a category range of 1 to 5. Popularized during Hurricane Gloria of 1985 by media.
- Jacob Bjerknes described ENSO by suggesting that an anomalously warm spot in the eastern Pacific can weaken the east-west temperature difference, causing weakening in the Walker circulation and trade wind flows, which push warm water to the west.
  • 1970s Weather radars are becoming more standardized and organized into networks. The number of scanned angles was increased to get a three-dimensional view of the precipitation, which allowed studies of thunderstorms. Experiments with the Doppler effect begin.
  • 1970 - NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration established. Weather Bureau is renamed the National Weather Service.
  • 1971 - Ted Fujita introduces the Fujita scale for rating tornadoes.
  • 1974 - AMeDAS network, developed by Japan Meteorological Agency used for gathering regional weather data and verifying forecast performance, begun operation on November 1, the system consists of about 1,300 stations with automatic observation equipment. These stations, of which more than 1,100 are unmanned, are located at an average interval of 17 km throughout Japan.
  • 1975 - The first Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES, was launched into orbit. Their role and design is to aid in hurricane tracking. Also this year, Vern Dvorak develops a scheme to estimate tropical cyclone intensity from satellite imagery.[19]
- The first use of a General Circulation Model to study the effects of carbon dioxide doubling. Syukuro Manabe and Richard Wetherald at Princeton University.
  • 1980s onwards, networks of weather radars are further expanded in the developed world. Doppler weather radar is becoming gradually more common, adds velocity information.
  • 1982 - The first Synoptic Flow experiment is flown around Hurricane Debby to help define the large scale atmospheric winds that steer the storm.
  • 1988 - WSR-88D type weather radar implemented in the United States. Weather surveillance radar that uses several modes to detect severe weather conditions.
  • 1992 - Computers first used in the United States to draw surface analyses.
  • 1997 - The Pacific Decadal Oscillation was named by Steven R. Hare, who noticed it while studying salmon production patterns. Simultaneously the PDO climate pattern was also found by Yuan Zhang.[32]
  • 1998 - Improving technology and software finally allows for the digital underlaying of satellite imagery, radar imagery, model data, and surface observations improving the quality of United States Surface Analyses.
- CAMEX3, a NASA experiment run in conjunction with NOAA's Hurricane Field Program collects detailed data sets on Hurricanes Bonnie, Danielle, and Georges.
  • 1999 - Hurricane Floyd induces fright factor in some coastal States and causes a massive evacuation from coastal zones from northern Florida to the Carolinas. It comes ashore in North Carolina and results in nearly 80 dead and $4.5 billion in damages mostly due to extensive flooding.

[edit] 21st century

[edit] See also

[edit] References and Notes

  1. ^ a b Aristotle [350 B.C.E] (2004). Meteorology (in English). The University of Adelaide Library, University of Adelaide, South Australia 5005: eBooks@Adelaide. “Translated by E. W. Webster” 
  2. ^ Timeline of geography, paleontology (HTML) (English). Paleorama.com. “Following the path of Discovery”
  3. ^ a b c d Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 3, Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth. Taipei: Caves Books Ltd.
  4. ^ Fahd, Toufic, “Botany and agriculture”, pp. 815 , in Morelon, Régis & Roshdi Rashed (1996), Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, vol. 3, Routledge, ISBN 0415124107
  5. ^ Robert Briffault (1938). The Making of Humanity, p. 191
  6. ^ Robert E. Hall (1973). "Al-Biruni", Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. VII, p. 336.
  7. ^ a b c d e Jacobson, Mark Z. (June 2005). Fundamentals of Atmospheric Modeling (paperback), 2nd, New York: Cambridge University Press, 828. ISBN 9780521548656. 
  8. ^ Morison, Samuel Eliot,Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Cristopher Columbus, Boston, 1942, page 617.
  9. ^ Highlights in the study of snowflakes and snow crystals
  10. ^ New Organon (1863 English translation)
  11. ^ Florin to Pascal, September 1647,Œuves completes de Pascal, 2:682.
  12. ^ Raymond S. Bradley, Philip D. Jones, Climate Since A.D. 1500, Routledge, 1992, ISBN 0415075939, p.144
  13. ^ Thomas Birch's History of the Royal Society is one of the most important sources of our knowledge not only of the origins of the Society, but also the day to day running of the Society. It is in these records that the majority of Wren’s scientific works are recorded.
  14. ^ Cook, Alan H., Edmond Halley: Charting the Heavens and the Seas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998)
  15. ^ Grigull, U., Fahrenheit, a Pioneer of Exact Thermometry. Heat Transfer, 1966, The Proceedings of the 8th International Heat Transfer Conference, San Francisco, 1966, Vol. 1.
  16. ^ George Hadley, “Concerning the cause of the general trade winds,” Philosophical Transactions, vol. 39 (1735).
  17. ^ O'Connor, John J. & Robertson, Edmund F., “Timeline of meteorology”, MacTutor History of Mathematics archive 
  18. ^ Beckman, Olof,History of the Celsius temperature scale., translated, Anders Celsius (Elementa,84:4,2001); English
  19. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Dorst, Neal, FAQ:_Hurricanes,_Typhoons,_and_Tropical_Cyclones:_Hurricane_Timeline, Hurricane_Research_Division,_Atlantic_Oceanographic_and_Meteorological_Laboratory,_NOAA, January 2006.
  20. ^ Biographical note at “Lectures and Papers of Professor Daniel Rutherford (1749–1819), and Diary of Mrs Harriet Rutherford”.
  21. ^ "Sur la combustion en général" ("On Combustion in general," 1777) and "Considérations Générales sur la Nature des Acides" ("General Considerations on the Nature of Acids," 1778).
  22. ^ Lavoisier, ("Reflections on Phlogiston," 1783).
  23. ^ Lavoisier, Antoine, Elements of Chemistry, Dover Publications Inc., New York, NY,1965, 511 pages.
  24. ^ The 1880 edition of A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of Things Familiar, a 19th century educational science book, explained heat transfer in terms of the flow of caloric.
  25. ^ David M. Schultz. Perspectives on Fred Sanders's Research on Cold Fronts, 2003, revised, 2004, 2006, p. 5. Retrieved on 2006-07-14.
  26. ^ Millikan, Frank Rives, JOSEPH_HENRY:_Father_of_Weather_Service, 1997, Smithsonian Institution
  27. ^ Reynolds, Ross (2005). Guide to Weather (paperback) (in English), Buffalo, NY: Firefly Books Ltd., 208. ISBN 1554071100. 
  28. ^ Norwegian_Cyclone_Model, webpage from NOAA Jetstream online school for weather.
  29. ^ 75th anniversary of starting aerological observations in Russia (Russian). EpizodSpace.
  30. ^ Roth, David, and Hugh Cobb, Virginia_Hurricane_History:_Early_Twentieth_Century, July 16, 2001.
  31. ^ [www.eoportal.org/documents/kramer/History.pdf Earth Observation History on Technology Introduction.]
  32. ^ Nathan J. Mantua, Steven R. Hare, Yuan Zhang, John M. Wallace, and Robert C. Francis (June 1997). "A Pacific interdecadal climate oscillation with impacts on salmon production". Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 78: 1069–1079. 
  33. ^ Unified_Surface_Analysis_Manual.