Manual of Meteorology

Abstract

THE science of meteorology has had no very happy or harmonious development. After the invention of the thermometer and barometer, elementary meteorological phenomena such as expansion of air by heating, melting and congelation, evaporation and condensation, were for a time in the focus of physical investigation. But practicable experiments and personal observation did not prove sufficient for penetrating that intricate complex of physical phenomena which constitutes weather. Then the invention of the galvanometer and electrometer, which opened new worlds to the experimental physicist, became simply fatal to progress in the old field. The telegraphic weather chart seemed to open a new era, and led to the transfer of meteorological research from the individual university investigator to richly equipped offices and institutes. But the isobaric chart failed to be that ‘lamp of Aladdin’ which made all difficulties disappear. Disillusion and pessimism followed upon the highly-raised illusions. “Galton himself,” says Sir Napier Shaw, “after twenty-five years of unparalleled effort as chairman of the Kew Committee of the Royal Society, and a leading member of the directing council of the Meteorological Office, the most powerful body of scientific men that ever directed anything, became disillusioned and discouraged at the end. He doubted that anything would come of it all.” I could give many parallel examples from other countries of leading men of this science who, like Sir Francis Galton, began in enthusiasm and ended in pessimism.

Manual of Meteorology.

By Sir Napier Shaw, with the assistance of Elaine Austin. Vol. 2: Comparative Meteorology. Pp. xl + 445. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1928.) 36s. net.