XVII. Bakerian lecture.─On the grand currents of atmospheric circulation

Abstract

In the early times of the Boyal Society (a little more than 200 years ago) a spirit of inquiry and of speculation as to the causes of the Trade Winds arose among its members. The papers which we may presume to have first brought the subject into special notice in the Society, and which were published in the * Transactions,’ offered views which, in the light of subsequent knowledge and theory, show themselves as being untenable, and in part even grotesque. But those papers were soon followed by, and probably had an effect in leading to, a much more important paper by the eminent astronomer Edmund Halley; and this was followed 49 years later by one, more important still, by George Hadley, in which we may with confidence judge that a substantially true theory of a large part of the system of Atmospheric Circulation in its grandest and most dominant conditions was for the first time offered to the world through the pages of the ‘ Philosophical Transactions.’ Further speculations on the subject and advances in our knowledge of it have been made in later times and have been brought into notice in various ways. I believe that I have myself arrived at some improved considerations which are to a large extent trustworthy and go far towards completing the true theory of the grand currents of atmospheric circulation, and I entertain the ambition to have my views placed on record by this Society—the Society in which the subject had its most important beginnings.