History of the Meteorological Office

Malcolm Walker tells the story of the UK's national meteorological service – now known simply as the Met Office – from its formation in 1854 with a staff of four and a budget of a few thousand pounds, to its present position as a scientific and technological institution of national and international importance with a staff of nearly 2000 and a turnover of nearly 200 million pounds per year. The Met Office has long been at the forefront of research into atmospheric science and technology and is second to none in providing weather services to the general public and a wide range of customers around the world. The history of the Met Office is therefore largely a history of the development of international weather prediction research in general.

Formed as the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade with a specifically maritime purpose, the Met Office is now an Executive Agency and Trading Fund responsible to the UK government's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and serves not only the shipping industry but also many other groups of users. It is at the forefront of pure and applied research in meteorology and related sciences and, moreover, cooperates and interacts with the international meteorological community at administrative, operational and research levels. In addition to being a premier forecasting bureau, it is at the forefront of the modelling of climate change in the modern era.

This volume will be of great interest to meteorologists, atmospheric scientists and historians of science, as well as amateur meteorologists and anyone interested generally in weather prediction.

Malcolm Walker was an academic at Cardiff University from 1967 to 1998, first as a Lecturer, then, from 1983, as Senior Lecturer and, from 1996, as Deputy Head of the Department of Maritime Studies and International Transport. He was Education Resources Manager of the Royal Meteorological Society from 1998 to 2007. He is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and a Member of the American Meteorological Society. He co-authored The Ocean-Atmosphere System (1977), with A.H. Perry. He chaired the Royal Meteorological Society's History Group from 1989 to 1999 and again from 2007 to the present. He was awarded the Group's Jehuda Neumann Memorial Prize in 2001 and the Royal Meteorological Society's Outstanding Service Award in 2007. Since 1980 he has had a strong scholarly interest in the history of ideas in meteorology and physical oceanography and the people behind these ideas. He has published numerous articles and lectured many times on this subject.

Malcolm Walker

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City

Cambridge University Press
32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013-2473, USA

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521859851

© Malcolm Walker 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2012
Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data

ISBN 978-0-521-85985-1 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Illustrations