Modern Meteorology

 

Meteorology, as we perceive it now, may be said to have had its firm scientific foundation in the 17^th century after the invention of the thermometer and the barometer and the formulation of laws governing the behaviour of atmospheric gases. It was in 1636 that Halley, a British scientist, published his treatise on the Indian summer monsoon, which he attributed to a seasonal reversal of winds due to the differential heating of the Asian land mass and the Indian Ocean.

 

India is fortunate to have some of the oldest meteorological observatories of the world. The British East India Company established several such stations, for example, those at Calcutta in 1785 and Madras (now Chennai) in 1796 for studying the weather and climate of India. The Asiatic Society of Bengal founded in 1784 at Calcutta, and in 1804 at Bombay (now Mumbai), promoted scientific studies in meteorology in India. Captain Harry Piddington at Calcutta published 40 papers during 1835-1855 in the Journal of the Asiatic Society dealing with tropical storms and coined the word "cyclone", meaning the coil of a snake. In 1842 he published his monumental work on the "Laws of the Storms". In the first half of the 19^th century, several observatories began functioning in India under the provincial governments.