The Source of Weather.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 14 November 1925, Page 13

The Source of Weather.

T>l' aerial soundings made by airships. as well as by aeroplanes and in-strument-carrying balloons, science is now to seek new answers to the riddles of the weather. Exploring Rights by aeroplanes have been made already at great altitudes (writes Harry Harper in the Daily Mail). Now airmen in new machines, wearing suits electrically warmed to which oxygen is led automatically, are to probe still higher into the upper air, while on their flights to Egypt and India our airships are to carry observers who will obtain data as to wind and other conditions as they exist above the earth. By soundings with pilotless balloons instruments are often carried to altitudes of 10 or 15 miles, while in one case a balloon bore its self-recording mechanism to a mechanism to a height as great as 234 miles. . Emerging from such high-altitude soundings is the fact that the conditions we enjoy, or endure, here at earth level are made for us miles above our heads. There is a theory, for example, that our weather in this part of the world is due mainly to a constant interplay between two great aerial currents, one' a cold stream flowing down from the Pole, and the other a warm current moving upward from the tropics. Where they encounter each other —and the point of contact varies—the warm air rises above-the cold, and conditions are set nn which occasion wet or windy weather. Dependable weather records go hack only about 100 years, and modern meteorology has had a life of only about 50 years, but there is much we know to-dav: and there will be a- great deal more we shall know before long. The keynote of all weather is atmospheric pressure set in motion by radiation of heat from the sun. Increases in pressure mean fine weather, while decreases snell bad, and the weather at ground level is governed by the distribution and variation of pressure, and also by conditions of temperature as they exist at immensely high altitudes. What is the cause of *snch variations? This is a fundamental problem which science is now investigating. Already a system exists for the preparation of maps showing what is taking place in the air at low 1 levels, and if this can be augmented by an accurate knowledge of wfhat ally at vast heights meteorologists should be able to _ forecast weather with a certainty which has been_ impossible hitherto. Hence the vital importance of these amplified soundings of the upper air, which are _ now to proceed on an energetic, widespread scale. Every day meteorology is becoming better • organised. Investigations are becoming world-wide, and things which are still mysteries should ere long stand revealed. •