Thompson Brooke Maury

“ Were all the weather observers of the world to read off their instruments as it were by a given tick of one clock, their collective data would furnish materials for the most exact delineations of the complex atmospheric machinery which it is possible to obtain. Instead of piling up a mass of weather bulletins unsuited for purposes of a rigidly scientific inter-comparison, as was so long done, [1] they would contribute solid and coherent facts of nature, all ready to be put together and worked up by the meteorologist into a noble and useful science. ”

“ Our favored planet, not like the airless moon, is folded in the kindly bosom of an atmosphere which, while ministering nourishment to man and accommodating itself to all his movements and vicissitudes, interposes as his shield against the fiery influences of the solar system, even to arresting and consuming those countless meteoric stones, showered upon us from stellar space, before they can penetrate to the lower aerial strata. ”

“ On the liquid expanse of the stormy North Atlantic, crowded with the steamers and sailing-ships of all nations, there exists the finest field for this investigation to be found on the globe. When these vessels become "floating observatories," rendering up accounts of their daily simultaneous weather experience, it will be comparatively an easy matter to set for ever at rest the yet disputed questions of the phenomena of cyclones, and to formulate rules for maneuvering ships so as to elude their crushing forces. ”

“ The great highway therefore, along which the chief atmospheric currents move and introduce on our continent the storm-controlling and weather-producing influences, begins on the Pacific coast and traverses the country from west to east. As the Atlantic dominates the weather of Europe lying on its eastern shores, so in the Pacific Ocean is the cyclopean workshop of the atmosphere, in which are produced and whence are sent forth the meteors that perpetually travel over North America, and substantially mold its climate and weather. ”

“ As the investigation of the Pacific's meteorology is so important to America, the same system of observations applied to the Atlantic reaches to the roots of European meteorology. It is well known that the atmospheric conditions which shape European weather and climate are propagated over the French and British coasts from the Atlantic, so that every intelligent storm-warner and weather-forecaster in Europe casts a wistful eye to the western waters to catch some premonition of what is to befall his coasts. ”

“ The tangential and centripetal forces, acting at the same time on any particle of air in the storm, may be equal or very unequal, and the cyclonic character of the gale may be well marked or partly concealed. In the tornado, with a diameter of only a few hundred feet, the tangential force may not be appreciable to an observer, but it is present, and intensely assists in communicating vorticose motion to the storm, whose roar is heard with awe by the stoutest heart, as it crashes through the forest and even ploughs up the soil of the earth. ”

“ As on the screen of the artist's camera the sun instantly paints the true image of the human face before its expression can be changed, so does the process of simultaneous observation seize and secure all the elements necessary to delineate the current physical features and conditions of the atmosphere, as existing at d, fixed moment, and before they can have time to undergo change. ”

“ With the principles of this science all the more reliable rules of weather-forecasting are most intimately connected. We no longer think of judging of coming weather merely by the aspect of the sky and an examination of an individual barometer. We invariably refer—I do not say to the weather-reports of a few hours previous, for we often have neither these nor any weather-reports at all at hand—but we invariably refer to rules already deduced from the long study of weather-maps. The man who ignores these rules had better, in my opinion, leave all attempts at weather-forecasting alone. ”

“ The storm once engendered, no matter in what part of the world, may be stationary or progressive. There are well-authenticated instances of almost stationary cyclones and almost stationary typhoons, of which latter will be remembered the famous gale of the ship Charles Heddle—an Indiaman, carried round and round the storm-centre for five days—which progressed not more than ninety miles a day. Indeed, we may, as has been said, regard every wet-monsoon region as a stationary and semi-perennial cyclone. Such a meteor has been shown to resemble an eddy moving in the current of a rapid river. ”

“ But the overmastering interest and awe, awakened by the terrestrial atmosphere, through which this stimulus reaches us, are intensified by the consciousness that upon it we depend for vital breath, and that it is the medium through which an invisible hand sweeps every chord of humanity. ”

“ As the Committee of the Scottish Meteorological Society recently said, "This truly cosmopolitan work, which the United States are alone in a position to undertake, thanks to the liberality and enterprise of their Government, will bring before us month by month the general circulation of the earth's atmosphere, and raise if it does not satisfy many inquiries lying at the very root of meteorology, and intimately affecting those atmospheric changes which meteorologists have been recording." ”

“ METEOROLOGISTS tell us that their science is as old as Aristotle. If we should judge by its progress up to the middle of the present century, its antiquity furnishes little to boast of; for, in the long lapse of centuries, it must have proved an incorrigibly dull scholar. Within the past few years, however, it has greatly improved, and, especially since it became identified with the popular and important systems of storm-warnings and weather-forecasts, it has been rapidly developed. ”

“ But, apart from every aid furnished by cosmic meteorology to that of our individual planet, the extension of the international simultaneous weather-reports will, we believe, ultimately afford the data requisite for approximately forecasting some main features of the seasons. A single example (the great heat of last October on the eastern side of the United States) will illustrate the possibility of attaining in some degree this long-desired object, which, like an ignis fatuus, has eluded the pursuit of men for so many ages. ”

“ In citing these illustrations of the storm-phenomena which modern meteorology is charged with investigating, we have not alluded to the equally important yet far grander phenomena of "anti-cyclones," or those "atmospheric waves" of high pressure which, emanating from the higher latitudes, submerge a whole continent at once--around whose borders cyclones move as diminutive eddies playing around a rock in mid-stream. But enough has been said to show the imperative necessity for the prosecution of wide-extended or international research. ”

“ The well-known oscillation or swinging of the belts of winds to and fro on the meridians, which is kept up in never-ceasing response to the apparent annual motion of the sun as he crosses and recrosses the equator, must ever underlie the conception we form of the trade-winds and be perpetually present to the mind's eye. ”

“ While yet in the band of easterly trade-winds the storm will invariably work its way or be propagated toward the most humid region, unless mechanically borne in another direction by the great atmospheric current in which it is often embedded as an eddy in a river. The cyclone-tracks over all the oceans lie in the central bands of the great ocean-currents of high temperature and great evaporation, and the band of cyclonic violence is often beautifully coterminous with the sharply-marked edge of the Gulf Stream. ”

“ If the oracles of Him by whom are all things declare that he spreads "the cloud of dew in the heat of harvest," who "gathereth the winds in his fists," and once hushed the roar of the Galilean tempest, well may these wonders, ever fresh from his hand, enlist the earnest and inspiring study and observation of intelligent men everywhere. ”

“ There is not a profession, or trade, or handicraft in society which is not at every turn more or less influenced by the weather, and compelled to act upon some kind of weather-forecasts. No sooner had the Weather Bureau commenced its daily publication of "Probabilities" or "Indications," in 1870, than "whole troops of practical applications" of the data sprang into existence. It will be so with the international bulletin and charts of simultaneous meteorology. ”

“ One weather-report from the Atlantic, if only made a few hundred miles from the British coast, would be worth, for all practical purposes of storm-prediction, more than dozens of continental reports. If, indeed, the international system does not supply the needed ocean-reports in time for the European work of daily storm-warning, its daily charts show the conditions which usher in the various weather-changes upon the European coasts. ”

“ While the scientific world is despairing of finding adequate mechanical means of mooring a floating weather-station in mid-Atlantic to cable its reports to land, the necessity for such a station is being gradually superseded by the development of researches which if studied will supply adequate rules for weather-forecasting without mid-Atlantic reports. The immediate value of every means which offers any approximation to correct storm-warnings for the British and French coasts—frequented by the navies and merchant marines of every flag—is beyond calculation in dollars and cents. ”

“ It may be argued from the above facts that the anti-trade winds are thus maintained by storms incessantly making the circuit of the globe within the temperate zone. But in reality, instead of being the effect of storm-influence, the anti-trades are originated by independent solar agency, as are the trades, and they are potential and causal in producing the eastward progression of all cyclones. It must be conceded that the pressure of vast aërial currents does serve to force the meteor along with them as the river-eddy is carried down stream with the water-current ”

“ If it begins to blow toward the depressed centre of the storm as a north wind, it trends to the west, and is felt as a northeaster; if it begins as a south wind, it diverges as a southwester; if as an east wind, it becomes a southeaster ”

“ The cardinal object of this vast scientific enterprise, as the reader may anticipate, is the study of the atmosphere as a unit. The atmospheric ocean must be viewed by every thinking mind as a whole, whose complex parts act interdependently—as the various parts of a steam-engine—yet all constituting one grand mechanism. ”

“ It never prevails over any considerable area, and beyond its limits the atmosphere remains serene and calm; the phenomenon is of brief duration, the atmospheric equilibrium is speedily restored; the heavens recover their serenity; the atmosphere grows clear, and the sand-columns, falling in upon themselves, form a number of little hills or cones, apparently constructed with great care, like those mimic edifices of sand made by children in their pastimes. ”

“ It will greatly enrich the meteorology of the ocean and aid navigation, by supplying data for deducing those true mean physical values which teach the mariner at sea where he may find "a fair wind and a favorable current," how he may best utilize the forces of nature and elude its terrors. It will afford material for the renovation of the climatology and sanitary meteorology of regions not now fully investigated. But, above all, it will facilitate the elucidation of the laws of storms and those associate phenomena which conspire to produce the many-colored phases of "the weather." ”

“ In other words, just as a bucket full of water set to revolving on a perpendicular axis would show a depression in the centre, and the fluid be thrown from all sides of its rim, the Southern Hemisphere throws its water and its atmosphere into the Northern Hemisphere, all along the equator.
It is, therefore, a mathematical and mechanical certainty that there is an invasion of the northeast trade-wind belt from the southeast trades, and observation powerfully bears out the deduction of the mathematician. ”

“ Simple as this expedient is, it is evidently the key to all effective research in a vast gaseous ocean whose currents and waves are ceaselessly rolling and rapidly altering their geographical bearings, even while the sun is quickly passing from one meridian to another. ”

“ The equatorial side of the northeast trade-wind belt in winter approaches very nearly to the equator, and may be located in January at least as far south as the latitude of 2° north.
The freshest trade-winds in the North Atlantic are generally found between the parallels of 10° and 25°, and by long-protracted experiment in seamanship they have been found to have an average propelling power, when the wind is taken just abaft the beam, of about six knots an hour. But, of course, the northern boundary of the south-east trade-wind likewise varies and vibrates with the seasons. ”

“ It has long been, and is now, the universally-accepted theory of meteorologists, that the reason no cyclones have ever been known to occur on the equator is, that there the earth's rotation exerts a deflecting influence on the winds, amounting to zero, and hence the formation of a whirl is impossible. ”

“ It is easy to see that, if the atmospheric column, resting over any given area of the earth's surface, should, for any cause, be suddenly diminished, or its pressure and intensity be reduced, the gaseous fluid would rush in from all surrounding regions to restore the disturbed equilibrium; and, if the earth was not whirling around on its axis, every particle of the centre-seeking air would endeavor to move on the shortest, or the straight line. ”