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weather-uk press pack

Ready-prepared articles on measuring the weather

• 990123 Weathercams on the Internet As I sit at my computer scratching my head and wondering what to write about, I usually end of staring out of the office window watching
• 000129 Electronic weather stations A small piece of meteorological history was made in a quiet north London suburb last Tuesday. After ninety years of daily readings by a flesh and
• 000304 Measuring the wind According to the old saying, March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers. Somehow, I think those flowers would get on perfectly well without
• 010728 Measuring sunshine Sunshine recording has been a particular obsession of the British, perhaps because of the paucity of sunshine in this cloudy corner of western Europe
• 030111 The trouble with estimating Climate experts have a rule of thumb: snow depths estimated by most people are roughly double the measured depth. Nearly all of us have an
• 030614 Rainfall at sea Measuring rainfall over the oceans must be one of the most esoteric aspects of meteorology. Flood, drought, the growth of crops, soil erosion, water supply: all
• 030803 Faulty weather memories A fortnight ago many people were saying what a splendid summer it was, although those of us who dislike high temperatures begged to differ.
• 000717 Measuring thunderstorms My Collins desk dictionary does not mention the “brontometer”. Nor does it appear in the Met Office’s “Meteorological Glossary”. But it
• 880101 The origin of the thermometer Not only do we take our ability to measure temperature for granted, we also automatically assume that higher temperatures mean
• 880102 Who was Mr Fahrenheit? During the late 17th century thermometers were being manufactured all over Europe, but they all had different scales. Fahrenheit was the first man
• 880103 The Celsius temperature scale The centigrade scale in world-wide use today usually bears the name of Anders Celsius, a Swedish physicist of the early-18th century,
• 880104 The development of the rain-gauge Measuring rainfall is, on the surface of it, one of the simplest exercises of all in meteorology. Just stick an old can or dish outside in the
• 880105 A problem with wind In the nineteenth century it was clear that a detailed understanding of the wind was vital to an understanding of many meteorological processes
• 880106 Studying the upper air in Victorian times The British Association were persuaded by a number of scientists in the 1860s to launch a series of balloon ascents to study the
• 880107 Measuring the pressure of the air We know now that barometric pressure – that is, the downward pressure exerted by the air above us – is one of three most important
• 880108 The family of observers Unmanned electronic weather stations are beginning to supplant the human observer, but these stations are expensive, they need maintenance and
• 880109 Mountain top observatories 19th century meteorologists learned a lot about weather patterns near the Earth’s surface, but, with a few honourable exceptions, they knew
• 880110 The development of the radiosonde The radiosonde, a British invention, first took to the skies in 1937, although it was after the Second World War before it really came into its