View from our Hong Kong Studio. Featured and above image credit: PDD
It makes me wonder if forecasts have really become more accurate over the years. Are our high-tech instruments for prediction any more accurate than the old wives tales and methods used by our forefathers?
Weather
View from our Hong Kong Studio. Image credit: PDD
It is the earth’s troposphere, the lowest area of atmosphere that gives us everything we call weather from our warm summer days to our stormy cold winters.
Natural
Image credit: Petnaturals
Weather has been monitored using a variety of methods for centuries. Farmers, native people and others long ago learnt how the natural world around them would give all kinds of clues as to what the weather would be like. Tiny variations in the air can often affect plants and animals resulting in a change in their appearance or behaviour, forming subtle signs for weather change. Subsequently this type of knowledge was often passed down from generation to generation. For example, my mother who grew up in a rural village in northern Bangladesh would predict a storm brewing if her nose and ears itched. This particular prediction, from what I can remember, proved right most of the time – although I have no evidence to support it 🙂
The first instruments
Image credit: BeyondPenguins
Weather has attracted great academic thinkers from as long ago as the Ancient Greeks. It was Aristotle who gave us the word ‘Meteorology’ from the scientific study of weather. Then in 17th Century Italy, the first instruments were developed to measure changes in the earth’s atmosphere. Weather can still be predicted using very simple instruments so anyone can set up their own weather station at home.
Image credit: Astrium