Pioneers in the Science of the Weather

Abstract

THE year 1919 will be memorable in the annals of -o- meteorology. It witnessed the completion of the process of co-ordination of the national meteorological work in the operations of a single institution by the incorporation of the work of the British Rainfall Organization with the Meteorological Office. Beginning with the meteorology of the sea alone in 1854, when it was a department of the Board of Trade, in 1867, after FitzRoy's death, the Office undertook the mapping and the study of the daily sequence of weather, and on that account was placed in charge of a director with a "grant in aid"from Parliament under the control of a committee appointed by the Royal Society. In 1879, under a directive council, also appointed by the Royal Society, it became generally responsible for the publication of the national contribution of climatological data in accordance with an international scheme laid down by the Meteorological Congresses of Vienna in 1874 and Rome in 1879. In discharge of this duty it was authorised to obtain the aid of the Royal and Scottish Meteorological Societies and of the British Rainfall Organization; it was also empowered to recognise the duty of development of meteorological science by experiments and special investigations.