Weatherperson's Day

Meteorology

The Met Office's official description is:

Meteorology is "the science of the atmosphere. Embracing both weather and climate. It is concerned with the physical, dynamical and chemical state of the Earth's atmosphere (and those of the planets), and with the interactions between the Earth's atmosphere and the underlying surface."

It's not just looking out the window and realising that it's raining. It takes a lot of work to correctly forecast the weather. And the forecast is not always correct. Sometimes it's predicted wrongly. A famous one was in 1987 (in the UK), with Michael Fish. He inherently said that there would not be a hurricane, but hours later there was one of the worst storms in the country's history.

History of the Science

Aristotle is often noted as being the forefather of meteorology, with a piece called the Meteorologica being written in 350BCE. It was written about the Earth's atmosphere and the water cycle.

Over many centuries of research, there have been a whole plethora of sayings and proverbs that we still use today. Once such example is the saying "red sky at night, shepherd's delight" and "red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning". An evening sunset that provides this, will usually mean that good weather is on the way.

Here is a YouTube video from Physics Insight on what weather is:

Modern Meteorology

The way we forecast the weather today is completely different. For one, we communicate with other countries to see where trends are occuring, or where the next storm is headed. We have technology that allows us to view the planet from above in the form of satellites that provide imagery, radar and other technologies.

Interesting fact: the Troposphere is the lowest part of the atmosphere. It is around 6 to 10 miles thick, and contains all of the weather that is created.

Where everything is now recorded on a daily basis - temperature of the day, rainfaill amount, hours of sunlight, high and low tides, how much snow has fallen (at time of writing this, we'd had a good 3 inches of snow a couple of days ago) and so on. This all enables us to look back on the types of weather, how severe it was and also whether we are likely to see such weather patterns again.

Confusion of Terms

Sometimes, the science of meteorology is confused as the study of meteors. Although they have similar namings due to the Greek root of meteoros, this is now the only similarity, as anything that came from above in the sky was deemed a meteor - rain, snow, hail, etc.

Since then, it has evolved and focuses more on the weather and climate, rather than meteors - these are instead studied by astronomers.

End Note

We are celebrating National Weathrperson's Day with this piece explaining the history of weather, what modern technologies include in today's forecast, and also notable scientists that have helped along the way.