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Meteorology, the science that studies the processes of the atmosphere, arises from the need of human beings to understand and predict phenomena closely connected to life. We will see below the history of 10 people who have made relevant contributions to meteorology , or who today contribute to the development of this discipline.
Gabriel Fahrenheit
The Fahrenheit surname is well known in England and in countries that have received its direct cultural influence, such as the United States, since they adopted the temperature scale proposed by Gabriel Fahrenheit, although it is not the one adopted by the international system of units nor by most countries, which have preferred the temperature scale proposed by Anders Celsius, the centigrade. The international system of units (SI) has among its base units the absolute temperature measured in Kelvin, a scale proposed by William Thomson, 1st Baron of Kelvin, and which overlaps with the Celsius scale.
Gabriel Fahrenheit was born in May 1686 in Gdansk, Poland, and died in September 1736 in The Hague, in the Netherlands. He was an engineer and physicist, as well as a glassblower, an artisan technique for manufacturing glass elements that are used in the construction of measuring instruments.
Gabriel Fahrenheit’s parents died when he was little, and Gabriel had to learn to earn a living on his own. While working as a merchant in Amsterdam, he channeled his interest in natural sciences by studying and experimenting in his spare time. After settling in The Hague he worked as a glassblower making altimeters, thermometers and barometers.
Simultaneously with his scientific activities, Gabriel Fahrenheit continued to work on the development of meteorological instruments, and is credited with designing and manufacturing highly accurate thermometers. These thermometers used the property of liquids to change their volume with temperature, and when they expanded they moved through a graduated capillary tube that indicated the temperature associated with that volume. The first thermometers that he designed used alcohol, a liquid that he later substituted for mercury, since this liquid metal ensured more precise determinations. In order to record temperatures it was necessary to graduate and calibrate the thermometer, for which a scale of temperature values had to be defined. To do this, he took the temperatures of two physical processes that were constant and that could be easily measured; the melting point of a mixture of water and ammonium chloride in equal parts, to which he assigned the value 0, and the temperature of the human body, to which the value 96 was assigned, dividing the interval between both temperatures in equal parts. In this way the Fahrenheit scale is defined, whose unit is the degree Fahrenheit,o F. The melting temperature of pure water corresponds to 32 o F, and in turn is the zero of the Celsius scale ( o C). The conversion between both scales is achieved with the following formula: o C = ( o F – 32)×5/9.
Anders Celcius
Anders Celsius was a Swedish physicist and astronomer who was born in November 1701 and died of tuberculosis in April 1744. He was a professor at the University of Uppsala, a period in which he traveled frequently visiting astronomical observatories in Italy, Germany, and France. Although he was best known for his work in astronomy, he made an extremely important contribution to the field of meteorology. In 1742 he proposed to the Swedish Academy of Sciences an alternative scale for temperature measurement to the Fahrenheit scale. This new scale, the Celsius or centigrade scale, was defined by dividing the temperature interval between those corresponding to the melting point of water and the boiling point of water into 100 equal parts, which were called degrees Celsius, orC. And assigned the value 0 to the boiling point and the value 100 to the melting point, so it was a scale whose values decreased with increasing temperature. In 1745, Carolus Linnaeus proposed maintaining the way of defining the scale but inverting the extremes, setting 0 o C at the melting point of pure water at sea level, and the value 100 o C for the boiling point of water at sea level. the same conditions.
Anders Celsius conducted many experiments on the precise measurement of temperature. Ultimately, he wanted to lay the scientific foundations to define a unified temperature scale at the international level, which would give the same temperature value anywhere. To support this aspect of the scale he showed that the melting point of water does not change with changing atmospheric pressure and the latitude of the place where the measurement is made. But questions arose in relation to the boiling point of water, since it was believed that it changed with latitude and atmospheric pressure. Therefore a unique international scale to measure temperature was not possible with this reference. But from his experiences,
john dalton
john daltonHe was a pioneer scientist in the study of climate. He was born in England in 1766. He developed his scientific activity in various fields: physics, chemistry and mathematics. He studied the behavior of gases, a fundamental aspect to understand the processes of the atmosphere, which is a mixture of gases, and postulated a law on their behavior. Dalton’s law says that in a mixture of gases that occupy a certain volume, if the temperature does not change, the pressure exerted by each of the gases in the mixture is what it would exert if it occupied the entire volume. He developed a theory on the composition of matter, Dalton’s atomic theory, which postulated that matter was made up of small particles, which would later be called atoms, all the same for the same element and of different weights for different elements,
John Dalton met Elihu Robinson in his youth, a meteorologist and instrument maker, which earned him his introduction to meteorology. In 1787 he began writing meteorological records in which more than 200,000 observations were accumulated over 57 years. Even using simple instruments, John Dalton studied the humidity, temperature, and pressure of the atmosphere, as well as the wind; current references to the earliest weather records in England refer to Dalton’s records. John Dalton’s first scientific publication was in 1793: Meteorological Observations and Essays .
william ferrell
The American meteorologist William Ferrel was born in 1817 and died in 1891. His main contribution to meteorology is what is called the Ferrel cell. This cell is a zone of the atmosphere located between the Polar cell and the Hadley cell. However, some meteorologists argue that the Ferrel cell does not actually exist since circulation in the atmosphere is much more complex than zonal maps show. The simplified model of these phenomena that the Ferrel cell describes would then be inadequate.
William Ferrel worked on the development of theories that explained in detail the atmospheric circulation in the mid-latitude zone. He focused on modeling the properties of hot air and its dynamics, applying the Coriolis effect to explain its spin as the air rises. The meteorological theory with which Ferrel worked was originally proposed by Hadley, but he had not taken into account a phenomenon that Ferrel included in the model, the Coriolis force. Ferrel related the movement of the Earth to the movement of the air masses of the atmosphere and showed that the centrifugal force of the movement of the Earth acted on them. The atmosphere, therefore, cannot be kept in equilibrium since the force depends on the direction in which the air masses are moving relative to the Earth’s surface.
Hadley had mistakenly concluded that linear momentum was conserved. However, Ferrel showed that this was not correct, since it is the angular momentum that must be taken into account. For this, not only the movement of the air must be studied, but also said movement of the air in relation to that of the Earth. If the interaction between the two is not studied, a consistent model cannot be obtained.
Christoph Hendrik Diederik Buys Ballot
Christoph Hendrik Diederik Buys Ballot was born in October 1817 in the Netherlands and died in February 1890 in the city of Utrecht, also in the Netherlands. He was a chemist and meteorologist; he received his doctorate in 1844 at the University of Utrecht. He later taught geology, mineralogy, chemistry, mathematics, and physics, until he retired in 1867.
His first experimental works consisted of the study of sound waves and the Doppler effect, but his contributions to meteorology were more relevant. One of his main achievements was determining the direction of air flowing within a large weather system.
Christoph Hendrik Diederik Buys Ballot founded the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute and was its director until his death. He was one of the first people in the meteorological community to see the importance of cooperation at the international level, working intensively towards this end, and the fruits of his work are still valid today. In 1873 Christoph Hendrik Diederik Buys Ballot became the president of the International Meteorological Committee, later to be called the World Meteorological Organization.
william morris davis
William Morris Davis was born in Philadelphia, United States, in 1850, and died in 1934 in Pasadena, California. He was a geographer and geologist with a deep passion for nature, and is called “the father of American geography.” He earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and then a master’s degree in engineering. For three years he made astronomical and geographical observations at the Observatorio Nacional Argentino in Córdoba, Argentina, and then returned as a professor at Harvard University, where he continued to teach until he retired in 1912.
William Morris Davis studied meteorological phenomena including geological and geographical aspects, an interdisciplinary integration that significantly revalued his work. In this way, he related the meteorological events that took place in a certain place with their effects on geology and geography, enriching the information he generated through this multidisciplinary integration.
The approach to work in both meteorology and geology, a discipline in which he was a professor at Harvard University, was based on the observation of nature. In 1884 he proposed a model for the cycle of erosion and described the way in which rivers create landforms. This model was a very valuable contribution at the time, although it was later considered too simplified. The erosion model proposed by William Davis showed how rivers are formed, in their different sections and characteristics, coupling rainfall to the model, and therefore the incidence of meteorology, since runoff from basins is decisive in the formation of rivers. channels and all bodies of fresh water.
William Morris Davis Davis collaborated with the National Geographic Society of the United States writing several articles for its magazine. He also helped found the American Association of Geographers in 1904. He passed away in Pasadena, California, at the age of 83.
alfred wegener
Alfred Wegener was a German geophysicist and meteorologist; He was born in Berlin in November 1880 and died in Greenland in November 1930. He is a scientist of enormous stature, at the level of one of the most important in the history of science, recognized for his theory on continental drift, he is that is, the displacement of the continents on the surface of the Earth. Early in his career as a scientist he studied astronomy and did his doctoral thesis in that field, which he defended at the University of Berlin in 1904. But later he became fascinated by meteorology, a relatively new field of research at the time.
Alfred Wegener was interested in ballooning, and he created the first weather balloons that were used to carry out climatological studies by tracking air masses. He gave a series of lectures on meteorology that were compiled into a book called The Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere , a reference book in the training of meteorologists. In order to study the circulation of polar air masses, Alfred Wegener was part of several expeditions that carried out various studies in Greenland. On one of those expeditions, while they were studying a controversial air movement process, he disappeared along with a fellow expedition member. His disappearance occurred in November 1930, but his body could be recovered in May 1931.
Wladimir Peter Köppen
Wladimir Köppen (1846-1940) was born in Russia, although he was of German descent. In addition to being a meteorologist, he was also a botanist, geographer and climatologist. There were several scientific contributions from him, but his climatic classification system, the Köppen system, stands out. Although some modifications have been included, the system is still used today.
Wladimir Köppen was one of the last scholars able to make significant scientific contributions to more than one branch of science. He first worked for the Russian Meteorological Service and then moved to Germany, where he became the head of the Marine Meteorology Division of the German Naval Observatory. While in that role, he set up a weather forecast service for northwestern Germany and the adjacent sea.
After four years in that position, he left it to dedicate himself to research. Using weather balloons to collect data, Wladimir Köppen was able to study the upper layers of the atmosphere. In 1884 he published a climate map showing temperature ranges in annual seasonal sequence. With this map he developed his climatic classification system in 1900.
The climatic classification system was a work in progress, which Wladimir Köppen continued to improve throughout his life, adjusting it and introducing changes as knowledge of climate progressed. The first version was completed in 1918, but a number of changes were made to it until it was finally published in 1936.
At the same time that he was developing the climate classification system, Wladimir Köppen was carrying out other activities such as work on paleoclimatology. Together with his son-in-law, Alfred Wegener, he published an article entitled Climates of the Geological Past . This article was very important for the support of Milankovitch’s theory, which explains climate changes on Earth by relating them to changes in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun.
steve lyons
Steve Lyons, who works for The Weather Channel television channel , is one of the most famous current meteorologists in the United States. Steve Lyons was the extreme weather expert at The Weather Channel for 12 years. He was also an expert in tropical weather, preventing tropical storms and hurricanes. Steve Lyons earned a Ph.D. in meteorology in 1981, and prior to working at The Weather Channel he worked at The National Hurricane Center in the United States.
As an expert in tropical and marine meteorology, Steve Lyons has participated in more than 50 meteorological conferences. Each spring he gives lectures to prepare the people of the United States for the hurricane season, which sweeps from New York to Texas. He has also delivered World Meteorological Organization training courses on tropical meteorology, ocean wave forecasting and marine meteorology. Steve Lyons has also worked for private companies and has traveled the world reporting in exotic tropical locations. He is a member of the American Meteorological Society and has published more than 20 articles in scientific journals. He has also produced more than 40 technical reports for both the US Army and the US National Weather Service.The United States Weather Channel .
Jim Cantore
StormTracker Jim Cantore is a contemporary meteorologist, one of the best known in the United States. The fans, and it seems, the vital objective of Jim Cantore is to be in the place where there will be a very intense storm. While he is known for his television reporting, he has also been involved in other weather broadcasting activities. He was responsible for The Fall Foliage Report in the United States and has presented documentaries for The Weather Channel .
Sources
Wallace, JM, Hobbs, PV Atmospheric science: an introduction survey. Second edition. Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press, 2006.
Koch, P.S. William Morris Davis Brief life of a pioneering geomorphologist: 1850-1934. Harvard Magazine , 2018.
