THE EXPLORATION OF THE AT:\I0SPHERE AT SEA BY 

 MEANS OF KITES. 



By A. Lawrence Rotch, 



Director of Bine Hill Meteorological Observatory. 



The method of obtaining meteoroloo"ioal observations with kites at 

 Bkie Hill Observatoiy has been fully described in appendixes to the 

 Smithsonian Reports for 1897 and 1900, and it will suffice to say, there- 

 fore, that durino- the past seven years several hundred records of the 

 conditions prevailing in the free air have been brought down from an 

 extreme height of 3 miles. These observations have been obtained in 

 almost all weather conditions when the velocity of the wind at the 

 ground was between 12 and 35 miles an hour. Certain types of weather, 

 technically known as anticyclones, and which are characterized bj^ a 

 high barometric pressure and light winds, can therefore rarely be 

 studied aloft, although it is sometimes possible to send up the kites in 

 advance of these conditions and to descend in the central calm area. 

 Often while there is sufficient wind near the ground, it fails entirel}'^ 

 at about a mile altitude, near the cumulus clouds, and thus the kites 

 are prevented from rising higher, although at a greater height there is 

 almost always a strong wind. It is usually impossible to launch the 

 kites during the strong gales that attend the coming on and passing off 

 of deep cyclonic disturbances. 



As mentioned in my last paper, the United States Weather Bureau 

 undertook during the summer of 1S9S to obtain observations with kites 

 simultaneousl}^ at a number of places in the central part of the coun- 

 try, l)ut, as the light winds prevented flights from being made regu- 

 larly at all the stations, the experiment was abandoned. About the 

 same time the employment of kites for meteorological research was 

 taken up on the Continent of Europe, and this work has been most 

 successfully carried out at the private observatory of M. Teisserenc 

 de Bort, near Paris, and at the Aeronautical Observatory^ of the Royal 

 Prussian ^Meteorological Institute, near Berlin, which is at the present 

 time the most completely equipped establishment of the kind in the 

 world. The systematic exploration of the atmosphere al)ove the Con- 

 tinent of Europe has been in progress for several years through the 



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