EECENT PROGEESS IN DYNAMIC METEOROLOGY. 



By Cleveland Abbe. 



PREFACE. 



The previous snminaries of progress in meteorology that I have pub- 

 lished since 1871 have each in its turn more or less imperfectly cov- 

 ered the whole field of meteorology, but it has not seemed wise for me in 

 the i)reseiit summary to endeavor to compass a science which is now so 

 rapidly enlarging in all directions. Several reasons have led me to 

 this conclusion, among which I may mention, first, the fact that the 

 American Journal of Meteorology, published at Ann Arbor, Mich., and 

 which is now in its fifth year, has, siuce the publication of my sum- 

 mary for 1884, endeavored to keep its American readers fully acquainted 

 with the progress in all branches of our subject, while the German 

 Zeitschrift, published at Ilamburg, and which is now in the sixth year 

 of its succession to the Austrian Zeitschrift, accomplishes the same ob- 

 ject for German readers in the most exhaustive manner, and is of course 

 widely circulated in this country. Again, as regards recent progress 

 in instrumental meteorology, Auierican readers will perhaps find a 

 sufficiently complete statement of the present condition of that subject 

 in my Treatise published in December, 1888, as part ii of the annual re- 

 port of theChief Signal Officer for 1887. Finally, asmy own studies have 

 duriug the past year been almost wholly directed to the dynamical 

 phenomena that are oflered to us in the movements of the atmosphere, 

 and as these are undoubtedly by far the most imi)ortant <piestions that 

 come before the practical meteorologist, and are those about which most 

 numerous inquiries are made (or rather by means of which innumera- 

 ble popular questions must be answered), I have in the present sum- 

 mary endeavored to give an account of the important works that have 

 appeared up to December, 1888, on the movements of storms and the 

 general motions of the atmosphere, reserving for a next report some 

 equally important papers that have come to hand since that date. 



Some of these memoirs are so important and so little accessible to 

 American readers, that not content with a popular summary, I havepre- 

 j)ared full translations of them, which will be printe<l in the i)resent, or 

 a following Iteport, in the confident hope and exi)ectation that American 

 mathematicians, physicists, and meteorologists may thus be stimulated to 



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