How science shone through our clouds (history)
From the Daily Telegraph - Troy Lennon
This week Sydney shivered through the coldest April day in 60 years. This Month we also had the longest number of consecutive days of rain in 15 years. Australia is supposed to be one of the hottest, driest places on earth so when weather events like these occur, it makes people wonder.
But neither the cold snap nor the recent precipitation can match one of the most bizarre weather events in Australian history. In 1836 Sydney had been experiencing freezing temperatures when on June 28, the snow began to fall.
Although it was far from being a blizzard, the snowfall was enough to blanket the city in white right up to the shores of the Harbour. A newspaper of the day reported that the Aborigines were terrified by the snow, suggesting how rare an event it was. The colonists, mostly from temperate climates were use to the snow and having only a limited knowledge of local climate conditions, were surprised but not shocked by the snow. After all, there was a limited basis for comparison. Settlers had been making records of the Australian weather for less than 40 years.
Although the dreamtime stories of Aborigines are filled with references to weather, they had not left the colonists detailed records of weather on this continent. Many explorers who visited our shores noted temperature and climate conditions, but it was not until Lieutenant William Dawes who arrived with the First Fleet in 1788, that systematic recording of the weather in Australia began.
Dawes was also the colony's astronomer and made the first attempts to study the language of the local Aborigines. At first his daily readings of temperature, wind, air pressure and rainfall were conducted from a makeshift camp outside the main settlement on what would become known as Dawes Point. There Dawes built an observatory that would be at the centre of weather studies until a new observatory was built at Parramatta in the 1820's.
In the early 1800's weather forecasting was as much a superstition as it was a science. Many predictions were based as much on sayings such as "red sky at morning, sailors take warning" as on evidence gathered through systematic observations. But the science of meteorology was changing.
In the 17th century the English scientist Edmond Halley had noted the link between changes in air pressure and weather conditions. Since then barometers have been a regular tool of forecasters. German physicist Daniel Fahrenheit produced the first reliable thermometer and other meteorological instruments in the 18th century, advancing the science. But up until the 19th century observations of temperature, winds and air pressure were taken from a single point and then predictions were made. In the early 1800's scientists realised that to make sense of the weather, they needed a more comprehensive picture of the weather system which could possibly even help them make more accurate predictions.
In 1826 Heinrich Brandes, a German mathematician, produced the first synoptic weather chart, compiling observations from across France and Germany. Brandes' charts were of long-past weather conditions and not of much use to predict the immediate weather. What was needed was some way of gathering observations quickly from a wide area. This was made possible by the invention of the telegraph in the 1840s.
But data needed to be collected by a central meteorological authority. Up to the middle of the 1800s few most were attached to observatories. But when the Anglo-French fleet was ravaged by a storm in 1854 during the Crimean War, it gave impetus to the establishment of a British weather service in 1861.
In the colonies the importance of gathering weather information had long been realised, since the seasons and the weather seemed far more changeable in these places than Europe. Official weather observations were first taken in Sydney in 1859 at the site of Dawes's observatory. This was mostly because of the initiative of an English clergyman, Reverend William Scott, astronomer at the Sydney observatory from 1859 to 1862. He was succeeded by George Smalley, who initiated the collection of weather data by telegraph. When Smalley left the job in 1870 he anointed Henry Russell as his successor. Russell increased the number of weather observation stations and even invented instruments to make observations. The science Museum in London holds one of his portable anemometers. Russell also arranged data exchange with other colonies and set up a conference among all the meteorological bureaus in Australia.
In Victoria, German-born scientist Georg von Neumayer began making observations in the 1850s and was appointed that colony's government astronomer in 1859. In South Australia from 1855, Charles Todd was a driving force not only behind the study of the weather but also the setting up of a telegraph line from Adelaide to Darwin. He instructed his telegraph operators to make weather observations.
Other colonies were also making weather observations, and in some cases predictions, by the late 19th century. In Queensland the weather bureau would be dominated by the eccentric British-born Clement Wragge. He had served with Todd and studied meteorology in the 1870s. After setting up weather stations in England, he returned to Australia and was appointed government meteorologist in the Queensland post and telegraph department in 1887. Among his many achievements, Wragge introduced the practice of naming cyclones. At first he used letters of the Greek alphabet, then female names but later moved on to naming them after politicians - joking that they were also disasters. Wragge also represented Australia at an international meteorology conference in Munich in 1891.
Wragge believed that accurate long range forecasts could be based on 35 year damp-cold and warm-dry weather cycles. His assistant in these forecasts was a young Inigo Jones, whose ability to produce accurate long-range forecasts became legendary.
Nicknamed "Inclement", Wragge saw his reputation tarnished by his belief in the Steiger Vortex gun and it's ability to bring rain. His failure to end a drought in 1902 using these guns, which made a lot of noise and smoke but no rain, probably contributed to his failure to win the post of head of the federal Bureau of Meteorology which began operations in January 1908. It combined all of the operations of each state bureau into one organisation - the one that still serves us today.
During the 20th century methods for gathering and analysing data, as well as forecasting techniques, became more sophisticated. This helped give meteorology a new respectability. Weather prediction can never be 100 per cent accurate but today many people will not leave home until they have heard the forecast.
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