History Group Newsletter
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HISTORY GROUP NEWSLETTER News, views and a miscellany published by the Royal Meteorological Society’s Special Interest Group for the History of Meteorology and Physical Oceanography Issue No.2, 2014 CONTENTS Introduction ............................................... 1 INTRODUCTION Forthcoming meeting .................................. 1 Darwin and FitzRoy play .............................. 2 from Malcolm Walker, History Group Chairman The history of weather ships ....................... 3 I am sorry this issue of the newsletter is a month or 100 years ago .............................................. 6 so late. Thank you for being patient. I had to get my Under-reporting of tornadoes ..................... 7 book about the organs and organists of Exeter Recording the wind, Part 2 .......................... 8 Cathedral to the publisher by the end of July. World War II ocean weather ships ............... 9 Thank you also to those who have contributed 175 years ago .............................................. 11 articles to this newsletter. Please keep fingers on 75 years ago ................................................. 12 word processor (or typewriter) keys and send me Pressure ...................................................... 13 articles for the autumn 2014 newsletter. The New Occasional Paper ................................. 13 deadline is 15 October. Southwick House, summer 1944 ................. 14 This newsletter acknowledges a number of The man who named clouds ........................ 17 anniversaries: 75 years since the outbreak of the Our Society, 150 years ago .......................... 17 Second World War, 70 years since D-Day and, of Sir Napier Shaw Christmas Card ................... 18 course, 100 years since the Great War began. You The wet weather in January 1877 ................ 18 will see that the newsletter also contains items from D-Day meteorology revisited ....................... 20 150 and 175 years ago, as well as something from South Polar Times, Volume IV ...................... 21 1877. The latter has been included because it shows Recent publications ..................................... 23 that wet weather in winter comparable with that National Meteorological Library and Archive 24 which occurred over many parts of the British Isles 2014 members ............................................ 25 in 2013-2014 has happened before. Note that railway officials thought trains could be driven safely through three feet of water! Note also that postmen waded through water waist-deep. and very topical subject. Different angles will be covered – particularly radiation forcing, climate FORTHCOMING MEETING models and laboratory models – and the meeting will include a lecture by John Harries, winner of the o HISTORY OF THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT Society’s Mason Medal for 2013. He will give the Wednesday 15 October 2014, 2.00 to 5.00pm Mason Lecture on observations of Earth’s Imperial College, South Kensington, London greenhouse effect from space. A National Meeting of the Royal Meteorological SPEAKERS Society organized by the History Group. Ed Hawkins (University of Reading) This ‘Classic Papers’ meeting marks the 50th A brief history of climate science: from Fourier to anniversary of the death of Guy Callendar, one of the Callendar pioneers of greenhouse effect studies. The meeting Dr Hawkins will discuss the first studies on climate will bring out the significance of his work and also science, starting with Fourier, and including Tyndall, focus upon other papers which have contributed Arrhenius and Callendar. fundamentally to the development of this exciting 1 Keith Shine (University of Reading) Darwin and FitzRoy play The dawn of modern climate modelling – early one- written by Juliet Aykroyd dimensional studies The pioneering one-dimensional radiative- Monday 8 to Saturday 13 September 2014, 7.30pm convective models of Manabe and his colleagues in Progress Theatre, The Mount, Christchurch the 1960s, and related studies during the 1970s, Road, Reading, RG1 5HL firmly established many of the fundamental theoretical understandings of how carbon dioxide Tickets from the theatre. Telephone 0118 384 2195. causes climate change – and much else besides! Adults £10. Concessions (over 60) £8. They are remarkable in how they have withstood http://www.progresstheatre.co.uk/whats- the test of time, and even now can act as a source of on/darwin-and-fitzroy inspiration. In association with the Festival of Weather, Art and John Mitchell (Met Office) Music, each performance of Darwin and FizRoy will The dawn of modern climate modelling – early three- be preceded by a special talk or musical event. One dimensional studies was the father of evolution; the other the father of Manabe and Wetherald performed the first three meteorology. Both men changed the world – but dimensional climate change modelling experiments while one man is revered, the other is forgotten. in the mid-1970s. Their analysis of their results is an exemplary example of how to use models to Set during the voyage of the Beagle and in later understand the physical basis of climate and climate years, Darwin and FitzRoy plots the friendship and change, and their main findings still are valid almost tension between Charles Darwin and Robert FitzRoy. forty years on. Both men of science and men of faith, Juliet Clive Rodgers (University of Oxford) Aykroyd's witty and poignant play charts the Calculating radiation, with and without computers relationship between two giants of modern science Dr Rodgers will talk about methods of calculating on their celebrated voyage around the world, and radiative transfer, starting with radiation charts and catalogues the demons besetting both. describing the various approximations that were Every performance of this play will be preceded by used – and then dropped as computers became an event exploring FitzRoy's life, life scientific under more capable. sail, the music inspired by the sea and the use of old John Harries (Imperial College) ships’ logs in modern climate research. Observations of the Earth's greenhouse effect from Accompanying the play and the events will be an space exhibition of weather-inspired art by two Reading The radiative energy balance of the Earth has been artists, Julia Rogers and Roxana Tohaneanu-Shields. studied for some years now, with ever increasing sensitivity and accuracy, and now we know a lot Monday 8th – Gordon Tripp about the spectrum of infra-red radiation that cools Admiral FitzRoy, Founder of the Met Office the Earth to space. The talk will describe some key Tuesday 9th – Professor Tony Rice observations using American, European and Science at sea and under sail Japanese spacecraft, and efforts to use changes in the IR spectrum to monitor climate change. Other Wednesday 10th work has sought to make sense of how the Pierrette Thomet and Gerard Cousins integrated long-wave and short-wave energy fluxes Sea Fever – voice and guitar vary with time. We will also touch on the nature of Thursday 11th – Dr Philip Brohan the energy balance of the planet: if the energy oldWeather – New Science balance is de-stabilized, e.g. by a volcanic eruption, how long does it take to restore equilibrium? Friday 12th – Professor Brian Golding Faith and Science Saturday 13th Pierrette Thomet and Gerard Cousins Sea Fever Gala Night 2 THE HISTORY OF WEATHER SHIPS The next speaker was Brian Booth, whose talk was National Meeting of the Royal Meteorological called None but the brave – the men of the British Society organized by the History Group, held on wartime weather ships. His was a fascinating but sad Saturday 22 March 2014. story, of two ships, SS Arakaka and SS Toronto City, which for several months from late 1940 provided A meeting on weather ships in a place as far from weather observations of vital importance from a the sea as Birmingham may seem a little perverse. part of the mid-Atlantic that was a data desert but However, the meeting attracted 51 people, and the were then sunk by U-boats. Prominent in his story room that was used for it, in the Geography were the meteorologists Sidney Portass and Stanley Department of the University of Birmingham, was Proud, who both perished when the ships were bursting at the seams. A dozen or more of those torpedoed. Brian’s story was full of graphic details, who attended had served on weather ships, and with illustrations to show horrendous sea conditions some brought along exhibits. and occasional superstructure icing, but he did not The first talk was given by Malcolm Walker, whose illustrate the conditions in the ships’ galleys which topic was Mid-Atlantic observatories: an idea before would not have impressed today’s health and safety its time. He began by saying that the electric inspectors! For further information about wartime telegraph had first been used in the 1860s to collect weather ships, see Brian’s article on page 9. real-time weather reports from ships that were far Next to speak was Oliver Ashford, who had been from land. A vessel which had telegraphic present at the naming of the UK’s first ocean connection with the mainland had been placed fifty weather ship in July 1947 and a year later spent time miles south of the Lizard to serve as a ‘call station’ aboard Weather Recorder on the North Atlantic. For for merchantmen entering the English Channel, but the voyage, he had been provided with a Bell & the connection had broken frequently, so the Howell 16mm cine-camera and used it to film life scheme had had to be abandoned. The ‘Sunk’ light-