Storm Watchers
The Turbulent History of Weather Prediction from Franklin's Kite to El Nino
Chapter One
Benjamin Franklin
Chasing the Wind
* * *
It is typical of the history of meteorology that the modern study of
storms should begin with the description of a spoiled astronomical event.
The study of weather has always been measured, invariably to its
detriment, by the standards of astronomy, its older and more respected
sister science. Through thousands of years of kingdoms advised by
astronomers, there was never a Meteorologist Royal. Knowledge of the
heavens was far advanced by the time the investigation of weather was
deemed worthy of a serious man's preoccupation. In the middle of the
eighteenth century, astronomy was preeminent and meteorology was
hardly a science at all. Some things were respectably knowable about the
physical world and some were not.
Two hundred fifty years ago, astronomers could predict the occasions
of lunar eclipses precisely as to date and time of day, and they could
explain their cause and effects: that the moon's orbit passes periodically
out of the brightness of the sun ... read full excerpt from Storm Watchers: The Turbulent History of Weather Prediction from Franklin's Kite to El Nino ebook
