Introduction to Meteorology, Weather and Atmosphere

• Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere, focusing on weather processes and forecasting.
• The term "meteorology" comes from the Greek words "meteoros" (lofty/high in the sky), "meta" (above/to lift up), and "logia" (to study).

Atmospheric Science

• Atmospheric science is the study of the atmosphere, its processes, and the effects of other systems on it.
• It considers the atmosphere from ground level up to outer space.

Weather

• Weather is the state of the atmosphere or conditions in the air around us, including temperature, precipitation, wind, and cloud cover.
• Weather changes from day to day and varies across the world.

Meteorologists

• Meteorologists are scientists who study the weather.
• They make predictions about what the weather will be like.
• They use tools and instruments to collect data on temperature, humidity, wind speed, and other factors.
• Meteorologists analyze this information to understand and forecast weather patterns.

Research Meteorologists

• Research meteorologists cover subdisciplines like climate modeling, remote sensing, air quality, atmospheric physics, and climate change.
• They also study the relationship between the atmosphere and Earth's climates, oceans, and biological life.

Weather vs. Climate

• Weather is the condition of the atmosphere at a particular place over a short period.
• It is described by temperature, precipitation (snow, rain, hail), wind speed and direction, visibility and cloud amounts.
• Climate refers to the weather pattern of a place over a long period, maybe 30 years or more.
• That is long enough to yield meaningful averages.

History of Meteorology: Ancient Times

• 300 BC: Start of meteorology traced back to India around 3000 B.C.E.
• Writings in the Upanishads discuss cloud formation, rain, and seasonal cycles.
• 600 BC: Thales, Greek meteorologist, described the water cycle.
• 400 BC: Democritus predicted weather changes.
• Hippocrates discussed weather in "Airs, Water and Places".
• 350 BC: Aristotle wrote Meteorologica.
• Theophrastus, Aristotle's pupil, compiled "Book of Signs" on weather forecasting.
• 250 BC: Archimedes studied buoyancy and hydrostatic principles, impacting understanding of convective cloud formation.
• 240 BC: Eratosthenes, calculated Earth's circumference with reasonable accuracy.
• 150 AD: Ptolemy modified earlier works to propose a geocentric model.
• This model has the Earth at the center of the universe.
• 25 AD: Pomponius Mela, formalized the climatic zone system.

History of Meteorology: Middle Ages

• 80 AD: Wang Chong rejected the Chinese myth of rain originating from the heavens.
• He stated rain forms from evaporated water condensing and precipitating.
• 1088: Shen Hou wrote descriptions of tornadoes, rainbows, and lightning.
• 1121: Al Khanizi studied hydrostatic balance.
• 13th century: St. Albert the Great described spherical rain.
• 1267: Prince Bacon calculated the rainbow's angular size, stating the summit cannot exceed 42° above the horizon.
• 1441: Prince Munjong invented the first standardized rain gauge.
• 1450: Alberti developed a swinging-plate anemometer.
• 1450: Nicholas Cryfts described the first hair hygrometer.
• 1488: Lichtenberger linked weather forecasting with astrology in "Prognosticatio".
• 1494: Columbus experienced a tropical, which led to first written European account of a hurricane.
• 1510: Reynmann published "Wetterbüchlein: Von warer erkanntnus des wetters".
• This was a collection of weather lore.
• 1543: Nicolaus Copernicus proposed heliocentric model, accepted after 1400 years of Ptolemaic geocentric system.

History of Meteorology: 17th Century

• 1607: Galileo Galilei invented the thermoscope, a thermometer.
• 1611: Kepler studied snow crystals.
• 1643: Torricelli invented the mercury barometer.
• 1648: Pascal discussed atmospheric pressure decreasing with height.
• 1654: De Medici established a weather observing network.
• 1662: Sir Christopher Wren invented the mechanical, self-emptying, tipping bucket rain gauge.
• Robert Boyle discovered the relationship between the pressure and volume of a gas.
• 1667: Robert Hooke built a pressure-plate anemometer.
• 1686: Edmund Halley studied trade winds and monsoons.
• 1687: Isaac Newton's laws of motion, cooling, and refraction theories advanced meteorology.

History of Meteorology: 18th Century

• 1716: Edmund Halley suggested aurorae are caused by "magnetic effluvia".
• 1724: Gabriel Fahrenheit introduced the Fahrenheit scale for temperature.
• 1735: George Hadley studied trade winds.
• 1738: Bernoulli published Hydrodynamics, initiating the kinetic theory of gas.
• 1742: Anders Celsius introduced the Celsius scale (centigrade).
• 1743: Benjamin Franklin asserted that cyclones move contrary manner to the winds.
• 1752: Benjamin Franklin demonstrated the electrical nature of lightning.
• 1761: Joseph Black discovered that ice absorbs heat without changing its temperature when melting.
• 1772: Daniel Rutherford discovered nitrogen.
• 1774: Louis Cotte led a "medico-meteorological" network, investigating the relationship between weather and plague
• 1777: Antoine Lavoisier discovered oxygen and developed an explanation for combustion.
• 1780: Theodor chartered the first international network of meteorological observers known as "Societas Meteorologica Palatina".
• 1783: De Saussure demonstrated the first hair hygrometer (humidity).

History of Meteorology: 19th Century

• 1835: Gaspard Gustave Coriolis demonstrated the effect of Earth's rotation on atmospheric motion.
• 1836: Alter and Morse independently invented the first known American electric telegraph.
• 1846: Robinson invented the cup anemometer.
• 1847: Helmholtz published statement of conservation of energy, the first law of thermodynamics.
• 1848: Thomson (Kelvin) extended the concept of absolute zero from gases to all substances.
• 1852: Joule and Thomson show that rapidly expanding gas cools, named the Joule-Thomson effect.

History of Meteorology: 20th Century

• 1856: Ferrel publishes on winds and ocean currents.
• 1859: Maxwell discovers distribution law of molecular velocities.
• 1865: Manila Observatory founded in the Philippines.
• 1872: Boltzman stated the Boltzman equation for temporal development of distribution functions in phase space.
• 1902: Assman and de Bort independently discovered the stratosphere.
• 1904: Bjerknes envisioned weather forecasting based on mathematical methods.
• 1919: Fujiwhara discussed the Fujiwhara effect, interaction of cyclones
• 1920: Milankovic proposes that long term climatic cycles may due to changes in the eccentricity of Earth’s orbit.

History of Meteorology: 20th Century continued

• 1922: Richardson organized first numerical weather prediction experiment.
• 1923: Walker described oscillation effects of ENSO.
• 1924: Walker coined the term Southern Oscillation
• 1935: IMO decided on the 30-year normal period (1900-1930) to describe the climate.
• 1938: Callendar first proposed global warming from CO2 emission.
• 1939: Rossby identified the Rossby waves in the atmosphere.
• 1940: Discovery of jet streams by high-flying military aircraft.
• 1953: NOAA creates a system for naming hurricanes using alphabetical lists of women's names.
• 1959: The first weather satellite, Vanguard 2, was launched but unsuccessful.
• 1960: Tiros 1, the first successful weather satellite.
• 1969: The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale created.
• It describes hurricane strength in a category range from 1 to 5.
• 1971: Fujita introduced the Fujita scale for rating tornadoes.
• 1975: The first Geostationary Operational Satellite (GOES) launched.
• 1980s: Expansion of weather radar networks, including Doppler radar.
• 1982: The first Synoptic Flow experiment is flown around Hurricane Debby to help define winds that steer the storm.
• 1988: WSR-88D type weather radar implemented in the United States.
• It is able to detect severe weather conditions.
• 1992: Computers were first used in the United States to draw surface analyses.
• 1997: Hare named the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
• 1998: Improving technology allows for digital analysis using satellite, radar, model and surface data.

History of Meteorology: 21st Century

• 2001: National Weather Service produces a Unified Surface Analysis.
• 2003: NOAA hurricane experts release first experimental Eastern Pacific Hurricane Outlook.
• 2004: A record number of hurricanes strike Florida in one year.
• 2005: A record of 27 named storms occurs in the Atlantic.
• 2006- Weather radar improved by adding common precipitation types.
• 2007: The Fujita scale is replaced for the Enhanced Fujita Scale for tornado assessments.
• 2010s: Weather radar significantly advances with more detailed options.

Atmospheric Meteorology

• Atmospheric meteorology, or atmospheric profiling, measures the vertical distribution of physical properties.
• It measures things like pressure, temperature, wind speed, wind direction, ozone concentration, pollution.

Aviation Meteorology

• Aviation Meteorology studies weather from the aviation industry's perspective.
• Leon Teisserenc de Bort of France and Robert Assman of Germany made discoveries in 1902.

Environmental Chemistry

• Environmental chemistry studies chemical processes in water, air, and terrestrial and living environments.
• It studies the effects of human activities on these.
• It includes topics like astrochemistry, atmospheric chemistry, environmental modelling, geochemistry, and pollution remediation.

Marine Meteorology

• Marine meteorology is a subfield that deals with weather and climate.
• It also includes the associated oceanographic conditions in marine, island, and coastal environments.

Mesoscale Meteorology

• Mesoscale Meteorology studies atmospheric phenomena with spatial scales between 2 and 2000 km.
• Examples include thunderstorms, gap winds, land-sea breeze and squall lines.
• There are 3 subclasses of mesoscale meteorology: meso-α (200 to 2000 km), meso-β (20 to 200 km) and meso-γ (2 to 20 km).

Microscale Meteorology

• Microscale Meteorology studies atmospheric phenomena smaller than mesoscale, about 1 km or less.

Weathers Modification

• Weathers modification is the deliberate or inadvertent alternation of atmospheric conditions by human activity.
• This is sufficient to modify the weather on local or regional scales e.g. clouds.

Mountain Meteorology

• Mountain meteorology studies how mountains modify weather and climate.
• Aristotle stated that mountains control the altitude range in which clouds form.

Synoptic Meteorology

• Synoptic meteorology is concerned with the analysis and prediction of large-scale weather systems.
• These systems are extratropical cyclones, and their associated fronts and jet streams.

Agrometeorology

• Agrometeorology studies meteorological and hydrological factors in relation to agriculture.

Atmospheric Physics

• Atmospheric physics uses physics to understand the Earth’s atmosphere.
• This is done with computer models, air and water samples, satellites data, and weather reports.

Bioclimatology

• Bioclimatology is a branch of climatology.
• It deals with the effects of the physical environment on living organisms over an extended period.

Biometeorology

• Biometeorology is an interdisciplinary science that studies the interactions between atmospheric processes and living organisms.
• This includes plants, animals, and humans.

Collocation

• Collocation is a procedure in remote sensing to match measurements from two or more instruments.
• It is done to compare measurements and to relate measurements of 2 variables.

Forensic Meteorology

• Forensic Meteorology used historical weather data to reconstruct the weather conditions.
• Data is reconstructed for a specific location and time.
• They investigate what role of weather played in unusual events.
• This includes traffic accidents and fires.

Hydrometeorology

• Hydrometeorology is a branch of meteorology.
• It deals with problems involving the hydrological cycle, water budget, and rainfall statistics of storms.

Meteorological Intelligence

• Meteorological intelligence measures collected and compiled information.
• It is analyzed and disseminated by meteorologists, climatologists, and hydrologists.
• This is done to characterize the current state or to predict the future state of atmosphere at a given location and time.

Climatology

• Climatology is the study of climate.

Atmospheric Chemistry

• Atmospheric Chemistry is the study of chemicals in the air.

Atmospheric Physics

• Atmospheric Physics is the study of how air behaves.

Hydrometeorology

• Hydrometeorology is the study of how oceans interact with weather.

Weather & Climate

• Climatology studies long-term weather patterns.
• It studies how climate change will affect the future.
• Meteorology studies how atmospheric chemistry and physics relate to weather and climate patterns.
• Topoclimatology studies how topographic relief influences local climate in the lower air layer.
• Barometry studies how atmospheric pressure is measured and relates to weather and climate.
• Paleoclimatology studies how prehistoric climates have changed.
• Paleotempestology studies how tropical cyclones have changed.

Atmospheric Physics

• Aeronomy studies composition in the upper region of Earth and planets.
• Radiometry studies electromagnetic radiation in the atmosphere.
• Aerodynamics studies how air circulates in the atmosphere.
• Hydrometeorology studies how water and energy are transferred between land surface and atmosphere.
• Geomagnetism studies how the Earth's magnetic field changes.
• Geophysics studies how physical processes and properties relate to the Earth.

Life Science

• Bioclimatology studies how climate interacts and affects living things.
• Geobiology studies how the biosphere relates to the lithosphere and atmosphere.
• Biometeorology studies atmospheric conditions and weather patterns impacting living things.