International Commission on History of Meteorology
2002 Meteorology, page9
Annual Report of the
International Commission on History of Meteorology
http://www.meteohistory.org
Nov. 15, 2002
James R. Fleming, President
Introduction
This is the second annual report of the International Commission on History of Meteorology (ICHM). It is intended to serve the interests of the ICHM members and to provide an archival record of Commission activities for the year. It is meant to stimulate interest in the history of meteorology, climatology, and related sciences, but it is not intended to be an exhaustive compilation of all activities or publications in the history of meteorology. ICHM members and other interested parties are invited to send items to any of the officers for the web and annual report throughout the year.
Members
As of Nov. 15, 2002, the International Commission on History of Meteorology (ICHM) has 146 members from 26 nations.
Strategic Initiatives
The ICHM would like to offer its cooperation in response to requests by Dr. Juan Jose Saldana, Secretary General of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS), Division of History of Science(DHS), for projects of relevance to the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the Conseil International de la Philosophie et des Sciences Humaines (CIPSH). Specifically, here is the response of the ICHM to Professor Saldaña’s two questions:
1. In connection with the "Online Dictionary of National History of Sciences Bibliographies and Archival Sources" do you reckon that the national committee, commission or scientific section that you represent would be interested in elaborating or updating the scientific bibliography concerned with its area of interest, considering that if necessary, financial requests can be met?
The ICHM will be glad to cooperate with the “Online Dictionary of National History of Science Bibliographies and Archival Sources” as proposed in a working document from the DHS dated 23 October 2002, especially in regard to meteorology, climatology, and related sciences. The ICHM is particularly interested bibliography and in the identification and preservation of scientific archives. Our Constitution has a section devoted to bibliography and archives and our website will expand its coverage of these issues in the coming year.
2. Regarding the activities contemplated in the proposed Strategic Plan (or of other ones not included yet), do you consider that the national committee, commission or scientific section that you represent would be interested in participating in the conception and development of other mobilizing projects in the new framework of ICSU’s policies?
The ICHM would like to propose a new initiative on “Policy-Relevant History of Science” in support of the goal of reforming ICSU and the DHS as active organizations responsive to the needs of the 21st century. We feel that the history of meteorology has much to contribute in policy-relevant issues including, but not limited to the following: air pollution, weather modification, polar research, satellite meteorology, ozone depletion, global climate change, and interdisciplinary earth science. This strategic initiative should also be of value in supporting the role of the DHS in a new ICSU committee on ethical and social aspects of science.
The ICHM initiative complements and expands other known efforts in policy studies of science by groups such as the U.S. National Science Foundation and the American Meteorological Society.
Meetings held
History of Meteorology -- Needs and Opportunities, Washington, DC, USA, 29-31 May, 2002, sponsored by the International Commission on History of Meteorology (see Minutes below).
Climate and Culture in Australia - A National Academies Forum Symposium, Canberra, Australia, 25-27 Sept. 2002.
Internationale meteorologische Kooperationen und Projekte, Fachausschuß Geschichte der Meteorologie, Deutchen Meteorologischen Gesellschaft, Universität Leipzig, Germany, 26-27 Sept., 2002.
History of the Lightning Rod, Baaken Library, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, 4-6 November, 2002.
On 28 March 2002, the History of Meteorology Specialist Group of the German Meteorological Society organised a presentation from James R. Fleming (ICHM) at DLR Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich on “Historical Perspectives on Climate Change: From the Enlightenment to Global Warming.” Historians visited the meteorological observatories of the former Palatine network (1781-1792) at Hohenpeißenberg (the oldest mountain station in the world) and at Monastery Andechs (which ended its observations in 1793 and now serves as a pilgrimage and conference site).
Meetings scheduled
International Symposium for the East Asian Network for Environment History and Climate Change, Kobe University, Japan, 11-13 January, 2003.
Presidential Symposium on the History of the Atmospheric Sciences, American Meteorological Society 83rd Annual Meeting, Long Beach, California, USA, 9-13 February, 2003. A number of other historical papers are being presented at this meeting.
Putting Weather into Environmental History, American Society of Environmental History, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, 26-30 March, 2003.
Meetings planned
Symposium on the 150th anniversary of the Brussels Conference on maritime meteorology, October 2003 in London.
Critical Problems meeting of the ICHM, Cambridge, Mass., in conjunction with the History of Science Society meeting, November 2003.
Symposium on the History of Forecasting at the American Meteorological Society 84th Annual Meeting in Seattle, WA, January 2004.
History of Forecasting Conference of the ICHM, Summer 2004 in Germany.
Anniversary meeting (150th) of the British Met Office, 2004 in London.
International Congress of History of Science, Beijing, China, 2005. Jim Fleming has been appointed to the International Program Committee.
Minutes of the 2002 Needs and Opportunities Meeting
Wednesday 29 May 2002
The meeting was called to order by ICHM President Jim Fleming at 3 p.m. in Room 328 Phillips Hall, George Washington University.
In attendance: Mal Berry (ret., Met. Svcs. of Canada), Kris Harper (Oregon State U.), Jim Fleming (Colby College), Roy Goodman (American Philosophical Society), Joan Kenworthy (ret., University of Durham, U.K.), Barney Mergen (George Washington U.), Al Mongeon (U.S. National Weather Service), Diane Rabson (NCAR), Robert Reeves (U.S. National Weather Service subcontractor), Roger Turner (History of Science Society), David van Keuren (Naval Research Lab), Edmund P. Willis (Independent).
All the attendees introduced themselves. Jim Fleming then explained that the purpose of the ICHM was to promote the scholarly study of the history of meteorology, climatology, and related sciences including their social and cultural aspects; and to preserve research materials, create finding aids, share collection information, and encourage the compilation of bibliographic information internationally. Following Fleming's remarks, Bernard Mergen, Professor of American Civilization at GWU, gave the keynote address: Imagining Snow.
Mergen, author of Snow in America (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), is interested in all aspects of American history, especially issues of work and leisure, human impact on the physical environment, material and visual representations of nature and culture, and the internationalization of American Studies. He is currently working on a book on the perceptions, marketing, and management of weather in the 20th century. Mergen gave a delightfully illustrated talk on how snow has been described, measured, and represented in a variety of media since the mid-19th century.
Following the talk a number of attendees adjourned for a wonderful evening of discussion and food at Charlie Chiang's Restaurant.
Thursday 30 May 2002
The meeting reconvened at 0930 at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History hosted by instrument curator Deborah Jean Warner.
Attending: William Aird (ret., NOAA), Mal Berry, Norm Canfield (U. of Maryland), Steve Cole (American Geophysical Union), Jim Fleming, Roy Goodman, Doria Grimes (NOAA Library), Kris Harper, Brian Heckman (US Air Force Academy via video link), John Kenworthy, Bernard Mergen, Al Mongeon, Diane Rabson, Rebecca Raines (US Army), Robert Reeves, Roger Turner, David van Keuren, Matthew White, Ed Willis, Sepideh Yalda (Millersville U.)
Following the introduction of all participants, the group heard the following talks:
Brian Heckman (US Air Force Academy), The Partnership between Aeronautics and Meteorology, ca. 1890s-1940s. Heckman, who uses historical topics in his meteorology courses, argued that aeronautics and meteorology were interdependent partners who contributed to each other's progress. He noted that detailed accounts of this history are lacking.
Malcolm Berry (retired, Met. Svc. of Canada), The Rise and Fall of Climate Applications: The history of a Meteorological Service of Canada program. Berry discussed the history of climate applications within the Canadian program from its early days of focus on agriculture and forestry (as a small organization) to the impact of the environmental movement and computer technology which aided its rise in the 1960s and 1970s. However, by the 1980s budget crises and a change in governmental emphasis to social programs led to its decline.
Doria Grimes (NOAA Library), NOAA Library Climate Data Imaging Project. Grimes brought everyone up-to-date on the digitization of satellite data, climate data (available from 70 countries, on-line, at no charge), back issues of Monthly Weather Review (1871-1973), and US Weather Bureau maps from 1871-1968. See http://www.lib.noaa.gov.
Steve Cole (American Geophysical Union), Irving Langmuir and Weather Control: A modern-day Quixote or Prometheus? Cole discussed Langmuir's training as a chemist, his work at the General Electric labs, and his pattern of having fun making the discovery and leaving the application work to others.
Kris Harper (Oregon State), Boundaries of Research: Civilian leadership, military funding, and the international network surrounding numerical weather prediction, 1945-1955. Harper briefly introduced how the Meteorology Project at the Institute for Advanced Study was started by John von Neumann in the immediate post-war years and how the successful move from development to application was the result of the accommodations of theorists to forecasting needs and of forecasters to the requirements for theory development.
Jim Fleming then read the abstracts from:
Boris S. Chendov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), On the Interdisciplinary Approach to the History of Meteorology. Chendov argues that meteorology can be used as a general point of entry into the interdisciplinary areas which are rising to the fore in both the history and philosophy of science.
Gregory Cushman (University of Texas, Austin) who described his future work on El Niño and the production of universal knowledge by transnational networks.
Fleming also read messages from the following members around the world who were not able to attend the meeting:
Dr. Togo Tsukahara, Kobe University who is working with Dutch colonial archives to reconstruct early observations in Japan.
Dr. George Vlahakis, President of the Greek Society for the History of Science and Technology who would welcome a future ICHM meeting in Athens.
Dr. Cornelia Lüdecke, Vice-President of the ICHM, from Munich, Germany who invites us to meet in Germany in 2004.
After the lunch break, attendees discussed the possibilities for future meetings including meeting at the same time as the American Geophysical Union, European Geophysical Union (Nice, France, spring 2003), American Meteorological Society annual meeting (Long Beach, California February 2003), the Royal Meteorological Society/Association of British Climatologists (U.K.). Attendees also discussed possible venues for future meetings including an invitation from Connie Lüdecke to meet in Munich (summer 2004). It was suggested that future meeting places and times for related organizations be posted on the ICHM website. As a reminder, Beijing is the 2005 meeting location for the International Congress of History of Science.
Melody Herr, acquisitions editor for the Johns Hopkins University Press expressed interest in contacting conference participants who are working on book projects.
University of Chicago Press issued a 20 percent meeting discount and exhibited the books Air Apparent by Mark Monmonier and Reading the Skies by Vladimir Jankovitch.
The session ended with a general discussion of "needs and opportunities" that included the following items:
* Institutional memberships. Suggestions included professional organizations (e.g., American Meteorological Society) and private corporations (e.g., companies that make scientific instruments or provide private meteorological/climatological services).
* Mixing with other groups, e.g., historians of science, historians of geophysics, environmental historians, general historians.
* Exchanging information, e.g., data, where information is, who has it, who has worked on it.
* Creating a pool of referees from within the group to provide feedback on works in progress.
* Focusing the ICHM website on the history of meteorology. Attendees were encouraged to send contributions as .htm files. [Mal Berry is willing to help with this effort.]
* Raising the history consciousness of meteorology, e.g., sending contributions to a variety of publications (technical, historical, general interest).
* Applying for tax exempt status for ICHM.
Friday 31 May 2002
Most attendees departed the DC area on Thursday evening and Friday morning. However, Norm Canfield arranged for a trip to the University of Maryland Archives which was attended by Kris Harper and Joan Kenworthy. The Maryland Room is the repository for the Helmut Landsberg papers. Curator Lauren Brown had pulled out interesting books and letters from the Landsberg collection for us to see. The finding aid for this collection is excellent and is available by request.
Respectfully submitted, Kristine C. Harper, Acting Secretary, 27 June 2002
2004 and the History of Forecasting
The year 2004 is the anniversary of a number of important developments in atmospheric sciences, especially in weather forecasting. To recognize this, the ICHM is planning a meeting on the history of forecasting in Germany in 2004.
1654 Accademia del Cimento in Florence initiated the first documented system of uniform meteorological observations.
1704 Increase Mather, "The Voice of God in Stormy Winds.”
1804 Admiral Beaufort invented wind force scale.
1854 150th anniversary of the great storm of Balaclava in 1854 that damaged allied ships during the Crimean War. Because of this storm, the Paris Observatory, under the direction of Urbain Leverrier (1811-1877), initiated telegraphic weather reports in 1856.
1854 150th anniversary of the Meteorological Department of the British Board of Trade, established in 1854 with Robert Fitzroy (1805-1865 ) as its director.
1884 Meteorologische Zeitschrift founded.
1904 Centenary of V. Bjerknes's paper on scientific forecasting. According to Bjerknes, the central problem of the science of meteorology is the prediction of future weather. In 1904, Bjerknes published “Weather forecasting as a problem in mechanics and physics,” in the Meteorologische Zeitschrift. There he stated the problem of weather forecasting as an initial-value problem in mathematics: using the ideal gas law, the first law of thermodynamics, the conservation of mass, and the dynamical equations of an ideal compressible gas, and given the current values of the temperature, pressure, density, and three-dimensional wind field, calculate the future values of these variables. Because exact solutions to this system of equations were impossible, Bjerknes promoted the use of graphical methods of solution.