Abstract
THE practice or science of weather forecasting will evidently proceed on two very different lines—according to the relative importance of local or seasonal changes in the general meteorological conditions, and whether the prediction has reference to a long or a short period. The machinery employed in cases where the forecast aims at great minuteness over a small area consists mainly of the synoptical chart, based on information supplied by rapid telegraphic communication, and in the hands of experts this means probably proves sufficient, and furnishes a fair percentage of accurate predictions. But in the more difficult, as certainly the more important, problem of predicting the weather some time in advance, and over a considerable area, a problem which regularly recurs in the monsoon forecast for India, one must evidently depend on the more general physical conditions that are produced by the motions of the earth and the distribution of land and water on its surface. These causes, it is true, are always operative, and to a certain extent meteorological phenomena, broadly considered, must be periodic in their main features. The causes of deviation from periodicity, and the extent of the area affected by such abnormal conditions, are problems which the professional meteorologist has to encounter, and it is to be feared with insufficient means. But it seems not unlikely that, in proportion as the problem becomes more general, by bringing wider areas within the scope of the discussion, the prospects of greater success will become more assured; and it cannot but be considered a most significant feature that indications are not wanting that in the two considerable areas, India and Egypt, the respective climates betray peculiarities which may either react upon each other, or the origin of which must be sought in a common source.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Nile Floods and Monsoon Rains . Nature 62, 391–392 (1900). https://doi.org/10.1038/062391a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/062391a0