Abstract
LONDON Royal Meteorological Society, April 20.—J. N. L. Baker: The climate of England in the seventeenth century. Descriptive writings provide evidence of a somewhat inconclusive character, and this can be supplemented by the reports of the Venetian Ambassadors, published in the Calendars of Domestic State Papers (Venetian) and elsewhere. The Calendars of Domestic State Papers furnish many scattered references, both to short periods and to long spells of weather, and from these a continuous account can sometimes be constructed. They also include important tables of winds covering the periods 1667–72 and 1675–78. The MS. diaries preserved in the Bodleian Library are also of value. That of Dr. Napier covers the period 1598–1635 but is very fragmentary: that of Elias Ashmole only extends from 1677 to 1685 but is unusually full. Most of this evidence has not previously been used, and an attempt has been made to correlate it with the accepted rainfall figures of Townley and Derham and other records, such as the diaries of Evelyn and Pepys. In a number of cases the older evidence is unreliable; at the same time, all the evidence is of an unscientific nature, and strict comparison with reliable evidence of modern times is apt to lead to erroneous conclusions.–C. W. G. Daking: The meteorology of Kamaran Island (Red Sea). The upper winds of this region would have played a big part in the journeys of the air-ship R101 to India and back, and it was probably because this information would have been so valuable that observations were commenced at Kamaran Island. In most respects, the climate experienced is typically tropical, but it is noteworthy that, for so small an island, the conditions are as trying as those experienced inland on the continents of Africa and Asia.—David Brunt: Notes on radiation in the atmosphere (1). The absorption spectra of water vapour and liquid water are applied to consider the justification for regarding cloud sheets and fog as black body radiators. Long wave radiation from the atmosphere fits very closely a formula only involving the absolute temperature and the vapour pressure. The fall of temperature after sunset on clear nights is closely proportional to the square root of the time from sunset. The tendency to instability is greatest for clouds of medium height.
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Societies and Academies. Nature 129, 698–699 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/129698a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/129698a0