CHAPTER XIII

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.