Abstract
THE Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society for July 1931 contains an interesting survey of the present position of weather forecasting, by C. K. M. Douglas. The author pays tribute to the work of J. Bjerknes and other Norwegian meteorologists, who have developed in greater detail the system of analysis of synoptic weather charts according to the past history of the different air streams begun by Shaw and Lempfert many years ago in “The Life History of Surface Air Currents”. He points out that for short-period forecasting the value of the method is undoubted, especially for periods up to twelve hours ahead. Any adequate discussion, however, of practical forecasting must always take note of peculiar tendencies observed, at least in European weather, described as ‘persistence of type’ and ‘mood’. An excellent example of the first is mentioned, that of the severe spring snowstorms of April 2 and 11, 1917. The synoptic charts that accompanied these storms are said to have had features in common not shared by any other charts during the present century. The second tendency is for rain to be absent in certain seasons when the distribution of pressure is such that in an ordinary year it would be accompanied by rain at that season.
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Development of Weather Forecasting. Nature 128, 768 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/128768a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/128768a0