Day 266: Weather by the Numbers

The meteorological “renaissance” that began in Norway and spread to other European countries at the close of World War I did not extend to the United States. In Europe, meteorology held the same “rank” as astronomy in academic institutions, and research on its theoretical underpinnings was carried out at several academic institutions in Norway, Germany, and England. But in the United States, the top academic institutions did not treat meteorology as a topic on a par with any physical science. If offered, meteorology was typically found in geography courses covering climate. At state universities, meteorology courses were often related to agricultural instruction and developed by Weather Bureau personnel assigned to conduct state climatological and crop studies.

The desultory status of meteorology in the United States, where other branches of the earth sciences began growing rapidly in the first part of the twentieth century, was particularly pronounced. Academic geophysics benefited from new philanthropic support. In 1905, the newly founded Carnegie Institution in Washington launched its new Geophysical Laboratory to “take possession of the vacant ground between geology and physics and geology and chemistry,” and its $2 million endowment soon made it an international leader in petrological studies. In 1909 the Carnegie Institution’s Division of Terrestrial Magnetism, boldly declaring its intention to map the geomagnetic field of the entire earth, commissioned the non-metallic ocean-going ship Carnegie to undertake this survey. A subsequent Carnegie Institution grant established the Seismological Laboratory at the nascent California Institute of Technology in 1921, and that same year the eminent physicist Robert Andrews Millikan was named Chairman of the Executive Council of Caltech. By that time, the Rockefeller Foundation’s General Education Board also was supporting research in academic geophysics, offering a grant to Harvard University to support experimental physicist Percy Bridgman’s studies of high-pressure on materials. The appointment of Norwegian oceanographer Harald Sverdrup as director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1936 signaled its rise as a leading research center in physical oceanography. Though as late as 1940 no US university offered a curriculum in all the component fields of geophysics recognized by the American Geophysical Union (and critics decried the absence of rigorous mathematics, physics, and chemistry training in most university geology programs), research and PhD production in many fields of geophysics, apart from meteorology, were robust before World War II. Funding remained inadequate for US government agencies involved in geophysics and the earth sciences: for instance, the superintendent of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey complained in 1921 that the salaries for its employees were “below those paid for skilled labor in mechanical trades outside the US government.” But the Coast and Geodetic Survey faced fewer challenges in meeting its mission than did government meteorologists. Expanding opportunities for research in other earth sciences fields thus made the contrast with meteorology stronger still.

Meteorological research in the United States was limited because meteorology fell under the purview of the Weather Bureau, which in turn operated under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture. Although the Weather Bureau—headquartered in Washington, DC —had a mission to keep the general public informed of upcoming weather conditions, its primary obligation was to provide agricultural forecasts. Because it was a government agency, any research it performed had to produce an immediate practical result. Similarly, the other two very small “weather services” in the country—maintained by the War Department and the Navy Department— existed to provide specialized forecasts for Army and Navy units. Any research they conducted supported operational requirements.

Military use of aviation increased dramatically during the Great War, and with it the importance of meteorology in keeping pilots and aircraft safe. The Weather Bureau received a special appropriation of $100,000 to establish aerological stations and coordinate services with the War Department and the Navy Department once the United States entered the war, and “flyingweather forecasts” for the military and postal service began in December 1918. Although aviation funding continued after the war, the Weather Bureau made little progress in expanding its services during the immediate postwar period. In contrast, European governments were heavily subsidizing the establishment of civil airways and the meteorological services that supported them. As Secretary Charles F. Brooks of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) noted in 1922, the Belgians were “astonished” that the Weather Bureau’s annual budget was only $2 million—or two cents per US resident—and he concluded that “meteorological expenditures and general interest in meteorology are greater in Europe than in the United States.” Because of the superior financial support, atmospheric studies in Europe were aided by both academic and applied meteorologists.

While meteorology flourished in Europe after World War I, it stagnated in the United States. The initial promise of increased funding, the rise of aeronautics, and the demand for meteorologists that emerged during the war years, very quickly gave way to retrenchment. Progress was limited— academically, theoretically, and within the applied sector. Underfunded, undermanned, undertrained, and chronically discouraged Weather Bureau personnel advanced the practical, forecasting side of meteorology, despite being crippled by externally imposed limitations. With demobilization, the Army Signal Service and the Navy’s weather services struggled to provide weather forecasts with wartime leftovers who saw potential career opportunities in flight forecasting for military pilots. And while the Signal Service concentrated on designing and building new meteorological instruments, it was the Navy that actively sought a more theoretical path toward weather forecasting. The Navy’s drive to professionalize its ranks would lead to the fi rst graduate meteorology program in the United States. And by the late 1930s, major meteorology programs would be established at MIT, at NYU, and at Caltech. These programs, and others that followed, would lay the groundwork for US meteorology during World War II and the Cold War. This educational foundation was a necessary condition for numerical weather prediction efforts that would begin immediately after World War II.

~~Weather by the Numbers: The genesis of Modern Meteorology -by- Kristine C. Harper