Abstract
FIVE years ago Dr. J. Bjerknes, of Bergen, Norway, visited the forecasting branch of the London Meteorological Office to demonstrate the methods of weather forecasting that had been developed by him and his colleagues. These methods had been arrived at in the first place because of a dearth of telegraphic reports from foreign countries during the War, which made it possible to progress only by securing more numerous local telegraphic reports giving an unusual wealth of information about conditions in Norway. Such a direction of development is contrary to that generally followed in synoptic meteorology in other countries, the natural course during the past few decades having been constantly to extend the network of stations to cover an increasingly large area, as it has been realised more and more that many weather phenomena can only be explained by tracing the past history of the wind currents involved during several days, which may involve the construction of ‘trajectories’ several thousand miles in length. Sir Napier Shaw has been prominent in these developments, and his “Life History of Surface Air Currents” is a notable landmark of progress on those lines. Nevertheless, as was shown by the French meteorologist Durand Gréville at a competition in weather forecasting held at Liège in 1905, it is equally true that many phenomena can be explained only by a very detailed study of local variations of wind and pressure in a portion of a single cyclonic depression, and this line of advance has not been followed nearly to the extent that it deserves.
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Polar Front Analysis. Nature 126, 899 (1930). https://doi.org/10.1038/126899a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/126899a0