Category Archives: History of Science

How To Find A Planet

By Jochen Broecker To make this clear straight away: this entry will only marginally touch upon weather and climate, but it will not be entirely unrelated altogether. Since you are reading this blog you must be interested in the natural sciences … Continue reading

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Three Flavours of Pykrete

By: David Livings Three Flavours of Pykrete A few years ago, Giles Foden published a novel called Turbulence. Most of the book is about a young meteorologist in the second world war, but there’s a framing story set in the 1980s, … Continue reading

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Putting a 120-Year-Old Barograph To The Test

By: Kieran Hunt Cast your mind back to 1900. The World’s Fair. Great Britain has just won 48 medals at the Summer Olympics including a clean sweep in the steeplechase. Queen Victoria’s reign continues through an unprecedented 63rd year. British … Continue reading

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Atmospheric diffusion: when anomalous is normal

By: Omduth Coceal Our long-term health and quality of life depends on the purity of the air we breathe. It is therefore difficult to overstate the importance of understanding and predicting the dispersion of pollutants in the atmosphere. Both observations … Continue reading

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When Did Fronts First Appear in the Met Office’s Daily Weather Report?

By David Livings One of the good things that can now be found on the web is a complete series of the Met Office’s Daily Weather Report going back to 1860. An overview of the early history of the report … Continue reading

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The History of Climate Change Science

By Peter Cook Many people believe that anthropogenic global warming was only discovered in the 1980s and before this most scientists thought that the climate was getting colder. However, the science actually goes back almost two centuries. Joseph Fourier (in … Continue reading

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Historical storms – a (very brief) book review

By Ben Harvey                         Department of Meteorology It has now been a year since the period of extreme storminess experienced in the UK during January and February 2014. High winds … Continue reading

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A Meteorological Postcard from Bergen, Norway

By Jon Shonk Thursday 25 September 2014 I am currently looking out of my office window at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Bergen (Figure 1), watching the rain fall steadily past the window from a grey sky. Dark … Continue reading

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The wider legacy of Sir Robert Watson-Watt

By Chris Scott While lecturing in Dundee recently, I took the opportunity of visiting Pitlochry to pay my respects (Figure 1) to Sir Robert Watson-Watt, the inventor of RADAR recently profiled in the BBC drama ‘Castles in the Sky’. While … Continue reading

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Routine climate data – going, going, gone?

by Chris Holloway I was surprised to hear recently that the US Department of Energy (DOE) is closing all three of their Tropical Western Pacific (TWP) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) sites within the next year.  These well-instrumented sites, located at … Continue reading

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