Abstract
UNTIL some twenty years ago meteorology was regarded as an elementary science founded on theories so simple that they might be taken as self-evident. Thus the cyclone was looked upon as a warm column of rising air with spirally inflowing winds at its base; the anticyclone, conversely, contained a cold core of descending air. Now we know that the opposite is in reality the truth; the cyclone has a cold core, the anticyclone a warm one. Another theory of equal simplicity and perhaps of even greater antiquity explained the general circulation of winds around the globe. It was argued that solar heating made the equator very much warmer than the poles; therefore there must be a rising current at the equator, a poleward flow of air in the upper layers of the atmosphere, a descending current in polar regions, and an equatorial flow in the lower layers. To question the validity of such a theory would have been regarded as almost an impertinence.
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D., J. Wind Circulation of the Globe . Nature 102, 348–349 (1919). https://doi.org/10.1038/102348a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/102348a0