This meeting will discuss needs and opportunities in the history of meteorology in light of the recent founding and rapid growth of the International Commission on History of Meteorology. Plenary sessions, held at George Washington University and the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, will include discussion of works in progress on the history of meteorology, climatology, and related sciences including their social and cultural aspects. Needs and opportunities discussions will include international communication and cooperation; identification, collection, preservation, and access to historical materials; historical bibliography; and plans for future meetings and projects. Meeting registration and membership in the ICHM are both free of charge. Travel arrangements and cost of meals are the responsibility of individual participants. For planning purposes and to guarantee your place in the meeting, please fill out the registration form. Final schedule Wednesday, May 29 Venue: George Washington University, Room 328 Phillips Hall Directions: Foggy Bottom/GWU Metro Stop. Phillips Hall is a glass & steel building just past the corner of 22nd & I Streets, one block east of the metro stop. Enter from I Street (Eye Street). Room 328 is on the 3rd floor. Session 1: 3:00-4:30 p.m. Introductions and discussion of needs Session 2: 4:45-6:00 p.m. Keynote address Imagining Snow Bernard Mergen, American Studies, GWU. Dinner: 6:15 p.m. Charlie Chiang's Restaurant & Lounge, 1912 I Street, NW   Thursday, May 30 Venue: Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History Directions: Smithsonian Metro Stop (Mall exit) or Federal Triangle Metro Stop. Constitution Avenue entrance, near 12th St, NW. Meeting is in Staff Dining Room Registration: 9:00-9:30 a.m. Pick up visitor badges, Constitution Ave. entrance. Session 3: 9:30 a.m. &emdash; 10:45 a.m. works in progress I The Partnership between Aeronautics and Meteorology, ca. 1890s-1940s Brian Heckman, United States Air Force Academy The Rise and Fall of Climate Applications: The history of a Meteorological Service of Canada program Malcolm Berry, Meteorological Service of Canada, retired NOAA Library Climate Data Imaging Project Doria Grimes, NOAA Central Library Session 4: 11:00 a.m. &emdash; 12:30 p.m. works in progress II Irving Langmuir & Weather Control: A modern-day Quixote or Prometheus? Steve Cole, American Geophysical Union and Jim Fleming, Colby College Boundaries of Research: Civilian leadership, military funding, and the international network surrounding numerical weather prediction, 1945-1955 Kristine Harper, Oregon State University On the Interdisciplinary Approach to the History of Meteorology Boris Chendov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (abstract read in absentia) Topoclimate in Sri Lanka: A study of the Dumbara Hills W.M.G.B. Giragama, Research Associate, Sri Lanka General Discussion Lunch: 12:30 p.m. &endash; 2:00 p.m. Smithsonian cafeterias and local restaurants Session 5: 2:00 p.m. - -5:00 p.m. Opportunities and future directions Dinner: On the town   Friday, May 31 Venue: Informal field trips to AIP Center for History of Physics, University of Maryland, Archives II, NOAA Library, Smithsonian Museums, Library of Congress ~~~~~ Paper Abstracts The Partnership between Aeronautics and Meteorology, ca. 1890s-1940s Brian Heckman, United States Air Force Academy [Abstract pending] The Rise and Fall of Climate Applications: The history of a Meteorological Service of Canada program Malcolm Berry, Meteorological Service of Canada, retired In the 1950s and 1960s there was a sharp increase in demand for applied climatological information in Canada. The Meteorological Service of Canada (formerly the Atmospheric Environment Service) responded initially by loaning climatologists to other federal and provincial governments. By the end of the 1960s MSC had replaced this secondary program with an in-house climate applications division. Much of the division's work was directed to providing support to agriculture, solar and wind energy, forestry, building design, recreation and offshore petroleum development. The 1980s saw a rapid increase in the importance of issues relating to climate change and its impacts. At the same time interest in other areas, especially recreation and petroleum related applications, declined. In the first half of the 1990s climate change related work was partially decentralized and moved from MSC to universities. Much of the rest of climate applications was eliminated. This paper discusses the applications program evolution, and some of the factors influencing it. NOAA Library Climate Data Imaging Project Doria Grimes, NOAA Central Library In cooperation with the National Climatic Data Center, NOAA Library staff developed access to over one million pages of historical climate data in tiff and pdf formats through multiple online resources. Data reports from over 70 countries in the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia from the 1830s to 1970 are included. Meteorological parameters such as precipitation, cloudiness, periodic means, humidity, geomagnetic declination, ozone levels, and soil temperature some of the measurements available. The full text and images are connected to each title on the NOAA Library Network Catalog, to a separate website, and to WorldCat. See http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/data_rescue_home.html. Irving Langmuir & Weather Control: A modern-day Quixote or Prometheus? Steve Cole, American Geophysical Union and Jim Fleming, Colby College Irving Langmuir is generally disparaged for his weather control enthusiasm. Why did the Nobel laureate devote the last decade of his life to such strident advocacy of this new "science"? Was he aged and deluded (à la Don Quixote) or searching for a secret of nature (à la Prometheus)? An understanding of Langmuir's personal style of scientific investigation sheds a new perspective on the founder of scientific rainmaking. Boundaries of Research: Civilian leadership, military funding, and the international network surrounding numerical weather prediction, 1945-1955 Kristine Harper, Oregon State University Operational numerical weather prediction became a reality in the mid-1950s&emdash;first in Sweden and shortly thereafter in the United States with the establishment of the Joint Numerical Weather Prediction Unit in Suitland, MD. Both operational groups drew on nine years of R&D conducted at the Institute of Advanced Study under the on-site direction of Jule Charney and the off-site direction of Carl-Gustav Rossby. With Rossby providing the personnel, influencing the direction of theoretical meteorology, seeking to make meteorology the international science, and arranging for funding from a wide variety of sources, the story rapidly becomes more complicated than the one told of a group of Americans trying to predict the weather with computers. The story of the rise of numerical weather prediction is instead a complex tapestry woven from threads drawn from the stories of the development and influence of a research school, the competing interests of funding agencies, the interface between military and civilian agencies in scientific development, the professionalization of science, and the extent and importance of international cooperation for the advancement of science in the post-war era. As such it serves as a case study of the changing face of scientific endeavor during the Cold War period. On the Interdisciplinary Approach to the History of Meteorology Boris Chendov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences In accordance with the division into periods of the history of science proposed by the author of the present paper a new period of the historical development of science begins immediately after second world war. This period is characterised in the first place by the essential role of the interdisciplinary investigations in science. The first stage of this period which is still continuing is characterised by the process of increasing intensification of the role of interdisciplinary investigations. Such a process takes place in the field of contemporary meteorology. This fact raises new needs and new opportunities to the history of meteorology. Generally and roughly speaking the history of science has, on the first place, to reveal the various forms of interdisciplinarity in the process of historical development of the contemporary meteorology (since the second world war) as well as the connection between them, and, starting from the obtained results, on the second place to reveal and elucidate those events from the past stages of the history of meteorology which are relevant in respect to the interdisciplinary tendencies in the contemporary stage of development of meteorology. Such a research program would be of importance particularly for making fundamental generalisations in the philosophy of science and further to derive from them methodological conclusions about further investigations in the field of meteorology. Topoclimate in Sri Lanka: A study of the Dumbara Hills W.M.G.B. Giragama, Research Associate, Sri Lanka The approach of this study consists of an analysis of available data and field measurements. The ultimate objective was the development of a series of statistical models to understand the intrinsic relationship between the monthly rainfall of selected stations along the Colombo - Katugastota profile with location specific data and upper atmospheric data of Colombo. This model simulates some observed meso-scale features over Sri Lanka. An equation is formulated on the terrain following co-ordinates which facilitates the incorporation of the effect of topography.   Registration Form Home