THE PRESENT PROBLEMS OF METEOROLOGY 



BY ABBOTT LAWRENCE ROTCH 



[Abbott Lawrence Rotch, Founder and Director of Blue Hill Meteorological Obser- 

 vatory, b. Boston, Massachusetts, January 6, 1861. S.B. Massachusetts Insti- 

 tute of Technology, 1884; A.M. (Hon.) Harvard, 1891; Chevalier Legion of 

 Honor, 1889; Prussian Orders of the Crown, 1902, and Red Eagle, 1905. Estab- 

 lished Blue Hill Observatory, 1885; American Member of International Jury of 

 Awards for Instruments of Precision, Paris Exposition, 1889; Member of the 

 International Cloud, Aeronautical and Solar Commissions. Fellow and librarian 

 of American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Corresponding member of British 

 Association for Advancement of Science; Deutsche Meteorologische Gesell- 

 schaft ; Deutscher Verein f iir Luftschiffahrt; Councilor of Socie'te' Me"t6orologique 

 de France, etc. Author of Sounding the Ocean of Air; Observations and Inves- 

 tigations at Blue Hill, in Annals of Harvard College Observatory. Associate 

 Editor, American Meteorological Journal, 1886-1896.] 



NEVER in the history of the science have so many problems pre- 

 sented themselves for solution as at the present time. Numerous 

 a priori theories require demonstration, and, in fact, the whole struc- 

 ture of meteorology, which has been erected on hypotheses, needs to 

 be strengthened or rebuilt by experimental evidence. Until recently 

 the observations have been carried on at the very bottom of the 

 atmosphere, and our predecessors have been compared justly to shell- 

 fish groping about the abysses of the ocean-floor to which they are 

 confined. 



Probably meteorology had its origin in a crude system of weather 

 predictions, based on signs in the heavens, and it did not become a 

 science until the invention of the principal meteorological instruments 

 in the seventeenth century made possible the study of climatology by 

 the collection of exact and comparable observations at many places 

 on the globe. These data, owing to extensive operations of the meteor- 

 ological services in the different countries, are now tolerably complete, 

 there being comparatively small portions of the land-surface, at least, 

 for which the climatic elements are not fairly well known, the gaps 

 that remain to be filled lying chiefly on the Antarctic continent and 

 in the interior of Africa. 



Although it is about fifty years ago since the first observations, 

 made synchronously over a considerable territory, were telegraphed 

 to a central office for the purpose of forecasting the weather, it must 

 be confessed that practically no progress has been realized in this art, 

 for, while much has been done to complete and extend the area under 

 observation by the creation of a finer and wider network of stations, 

 and while the transmission of the observations and the dissemination 

 of the forecasts based on them have been accelerated, the methods 

 employed in formulating the forecasts are essentially those empirical 

 rules which were adopted at the inception of the work. A recent 



