THE CLOUD AND THE CLOCKTHE CLOUD AND THE CLOCK

A History of Weather Forecasting

Cesare Pastorino, 21 January 2011

“All clouds are clocks – even the most cloudy of clouds”

“All clocks are clouds – or in other words, only clouds exist, though clouds of very different degrees of cloudiness”

Karl Popper

WEATHER GOES PUBLICWEATHER GOES PUBLICIn the storm of 25 October 1859, 343 ships wrecked on the British coast, including the ocean steamer The Royal Charter. British meteorologists made the news.

OBSERVERS AND INSTRUMENTSOBSERVERS AND INSTRUMENTS

We are familiar with daily weather maps. How were they in the past? (Including spoof charts)

HISTORY OF THE WEATHER MAPSHISTORY OF THE WEATHER MAPS

ALL CLOCKS ARE CLOUDSALL CLOCKS ARE CLOUDSPlaying with weather and dynamical systems. Computer games and simulations exploring mechanical regularity and complexity, and meteorological models (making the weather).

Images

Slides one and two: Rene Magritte, Untitled (Clock on Cloud), 1966.

Slide three (clockwise): Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier and his wife, Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze; Vilhelm Bjerknes; Edward Lorenz.

Slide four: The Times Thursday, October 27, 1859; pg. 9; Sailing bill of the Royal Charter from the Maritime Archives and Library, Merseyside Maritime Museum; The Times, Monday, June 30, 1862; pg. 11.

Slide five: Anemometer, 1875. Science Museum, London (1876-785); Admiral Fitzroy's storm barometer, 1871-1880. Science Museum, London (1962-155).

Slide six: BBC Online weather map (January 20, 2011); weather chart, The Times Tuesday, February 20, 1877; Punch, October 30, 1875, 182.

Slide seven: infrared images of storms over Queensland State, Australia (December 2010-January 2011). NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory.

Bibliography

Karl R. Popper, “Of Clouds and Clocks: An Approach to the Problem of Rationality and the Freedom of Man,” in Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. Oxford 1972.

Katharine Anderson, Predicting the Weather. Victorians and the Science of Meteorology. Chicago and London 2005.