Weather Watch: Three Crucial Weather Inventions

Throughout history, discoveries and inventions have helped keep the world turning. Great minds that always question the why and how have proven to set the standard we still use today in so many realms and technologies.

In the beginning Newton, Galileo and Copernicus established the relationship between the earth, sun and stars. Understanding this created even more questions about what happens to the earth during its yearly orbit around the sun.

The seasons came and went without a sense of measurement until things like atmospheric pressure, wind and temperatures were all given a scale. Often times when I talk to students, many of them may not know the name of the instrument used to measure humidity, which is a hygrometer. However, almost all know what measures temperature — the thermometer.

In 1724, Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the first mercury thermometer, the modern thermometer, the measurement system is still the most common today.

Thermometers measure temperature by using materials that change in some way when they are heated or cooled. In a mercury or alcohol thermometer the liquid expands as it is heated and contracts when it is cooled, so the length of the liquid column is longer or shorter depending on the temperature. Modern thermometers are calibrated in standard temperature units such as Fahrenheit or Celsius.

Atmospheric pressure is another measurement that had to be quantified before the understanding and forecasting of weather happened. Our atmosphere has weight. If the pressure is high or heavy above us, clouds have a hard time forming. When the pressure is low, or the air is lighter, clouds form more easily. A barometer is used to measure atmospheric pressure.

In 1644 Evangelista Torricelli invented the mercury barometer. The barometer works on the principle of equalizing the weight of mercury in the glass tube with the atmospheric pressure. The weight of mercury is less than the atmospheric pressure then the mercury level rises in the glass tube. In the other case, mercury weight is more than the atmospheric pressure then the mercury stage falls down in the glass tube. The mercury stage varies up and down in the glass tube until the weight of mercury and the air are equal.

Satellites, computer modeling and radar round out some of the more significant advances in weather. No one person can take credit for having invented each of these but as they say necessity is the mother of invention.

You will find several names associated with inventing radar, most notably is Heinrich Hertz and his work with the electromagnetic spectrum. It was World War 2 that radar advances were really made. The military found radar a useful tool to detect enemy aircraft, but they had problems seeing accurately because of weather phenomenon like rain, sleet and snow. It was only after the war that David Atlas, a military scientist who returned to civilian life, was able to adapt this technology to the world of meteorology.

There are hundreds of weather tools, but these three set the foundation of how we understand weather and are the tools I use in my job every day.