Advancement of Weather Forecasting Weather forecasting began with the first humans realizing that they could determine what conditions might be, based on what they saw in the sky. Although some "folk" sayings about weather have been validated, we have come a long way from those early days and understand weather better now than we ever have. Over two thousand years there have been many advancements in weather forecasting but there have been certain advancements deemed more major to weather forecasting than others, such as the invention of the hygrometer, radar, and barometer. “In the fifteenth century, Italian artist and scientists Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) invented the hygrometer (pronounced hi-GROM-e-ter), an instrument that measures atmospheric humidity (moisture in the air).” Leonardo gave us an instrument that has been further refined and today’s hygrometers are also used in some incubators, saunas, humidors and museums. They are also used in the care of wooden musical instruments such as guitars and violins which can be damaged by improper humidity conditions. In residential settings, hygrometers are used to aid humidity control (too low humidity damages human skin and body, while too high humidity favours growth of mildew and dust mite). While modern electronic devices use temperature of condensation (the dew point), or changes in electrical capacitance or resistance to measure humidity differences the hygrometer will always be the isntrument that paved the way. “Weather radar first came into use in the United States in 1949 with the efforts of Horace Byers (1906–1998) and Roscoe R. Braham. Conventional weather radar shows the location and intensity of precipitation. In the 1990s, the more advanced Doppler radar, which can continuously measure wind speed and precipitation, came into wide use.” Modern weather radars are mostly pulse-Doppler radars, capable of detecting the motion of rain droplets in addition to the intensity of the precipitation. Both types of data can be analyzed to determine the structure of storms and their potential to cause severe weather. Although Evangelista Torricelli is universally credited with inventing the barometer in 1643, historical documentation also suggests Gasparo Berti, an Italian mathematician and astronomer, unintentionally built a water barometer sometime between 1640 and 1643. On July 27, 1630, Giovanni Battista Baliani wrote a letter to Galileo Galilei explaining an experiment he had made in which a siphon, led over a hill about twenty-one meters high, failed to work. Galileo responded with an explanation of the phenomenon: he proposed that it was the power of a vacuum that held the water up, and at a certain height the amount of water simply became too much and the force could not hold any more, like a cord that can support only so much weight. This was a restatement of the theory of horror vacui ("nature abhors a vacuum"), which dates to Aristotle, and which Galileo restated as resistenza del vacuo. These three advancements were monumental to the field of weather forecasting. Without them, I do not believe that we would be near to where we are today. “Study weather reports online, and you might want to give up on meteorology. ‘Deadly’ storms fizzle, while weaker-looking fronts devastate. Temperatures often soar above predicted highs or plummet below predicted lows. But for all the obvious errors, weather forecasting has gotten much better over the past couple of decades, and the improvements have saved many lives and dollars.” It is difficult forecasting the weather, it is not something that can be controlled or reasoned with, but with the advancements we have made over the last few hundred years forecasting can become an extremely reliable source of information to benefit the world.
Works Cited
Smith, A. (2009, January 28). Tech advancements improving accuracy in predicting weather. Retrieved November 16, 2014, from http://phys.org/news152379101.html
Heidorn, K. (2002, January 1). The Invention of the Barometer. Retrieved November 16, 2014, from http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/history/barometerhistory1.htm
Trubin, J. (2013, June 1). Evangelista Torricelli: The Invention of the Barometer. Retrieved November 16, 2014, from http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/torricellibarometer.html