It's Raining Men! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Gabriel Fahrenheit

One of the first things most of us look for in the weather report is the temperature. The German physicist Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) developed a mercury thermometer in 1714 that was the first precision instrument for measuring temperature. As the temperature changed, the mercury contained in the glass tube expanded or contracted predictably, so markings on the scale behind the tube allowed quick measurements of the temperature.

In 1724 he proposed a temperature scale (named after him, and still used in some parts of the world) that used temperatures which could be easily replicated to provide the two reference points on the scale.

They were the freezing and boiling temperatures of water at sea level and standard atmospheric pressure. Once these two temperatures were assigned the values of 32 and 212, the interval between them was divided into 180 equal increments, called degrees.

Answer: Anders Celsius

Anders Celsius (1701-1744) was a Swedish physicist whose first work was in astronomy. He was the first to link the aurora borealis with changes in the Earth's magnetic field, in a work published in 1733 based on observations made between 1716 and 1732.

He is perhaps best known, however, for his development of a temperature scale, initially named after him, now called the Centigrade scale, which used 100 even steps between the freezing and melting temperatures of water to determine the size of a degree.

He also conducted numerous experiments to show that these two reference points were indeed independent of the observer's location on the surface of the earth (although, of course, corrections for altitude need to be made).

Answer: John Dalton

The name of John Dalton is not one that most of us immediately associate with meteorology - he is more likely to be familiar either as one of the fathers of modern atomic theory or as an investigator of colourblindness (a visual disorder that both he and his brother experienced, sometimes referred to as Daltonism).

However, his first publication was 'Meteorological Observations and Essays' (1793), published in the course of nearly 60 years spent collecting and recording meteorological observations, starting in 1787 when he was 21 years old, and continuing until his death.

This systematic collection of data formed the basis for modern weather forecasting.

Answer: Christoph Hendrik Diederik Buys Ballot

C.H.D. Buys Ballot (1817-1890) was a Dutch chemist and meteorologist whose work led to what is now known as the Buys Ballot Law, which is based on the way winds flow around high and low pressure centres. In the northern hemisphere, winds move clockwise around a high pressure centre, and anti-clockwise around a low. (This is reversed in the southern hemisphere, and the strength of the effect diminishes in areas near the equator.) Buys Ballot's Law says that, if you stand with your back to the wind, the pressure to your left will be lower than the pressure to your right.

This generalisation was very useful for sailors who needed to determine how best to set a course when storms are encountered on the high seas.

Answer: William Ferrel

No, it's not the actor! The American meteorologist William Ferrel (1817-1891) showed that rising warm air (which is simultaneously rotating due to the Coriolis effect), tends to make air move from warm regions near the equator (starting at about 30 degrees) towards cooler regions near the poles. Around 60-70 degrees the air rises, then moves back towards the equator, sinking again around 30 degrees.

This cycle is referred to as the Ferrel Cell. There are two other main regions of large-scale atmospheric movement - Hadley Cell motion is within 30 degrees of the equator, and Polar Cell motion is closer to the poles.

Answer: Cleveland Abbe

The American meteorologist Cleveland Abbe (1838-1916) was the first head of the U. S. Weather Bureau, appointed in 1871. He was responsible (while still working at the Cincinnati Observatory) for the establishment of daily weather reports and forecasts.

At the Bureau, he organised a system of widespread reporting from the field that allowed him to construct accurate weather maps, which in turn formed the basis for his predictions. He made the first official Weather Bureau weather report in 19 February 1971.

It was the need to make accurate records of where and when each piece of information was collected in the field that led him to advocate the establishment of time zones, which the U. S. government adopted in 1879.

Answer: Wladimir Peter Köppen

Wladimir Peter Köppen (1846-1940) was born in St Petersburg, and started his studies there, but transferred to the University of Heidelberg in 1867 to complete his doctorate, and spent most of the rest of his life working in Germany and Austria. His name will be most familiar from his work on classification of climate types - Köppen classifications are still used.

But he started his career working in meteorology, first working on collecting wind data over the oceans, then working in the Russian meteorological service preparing daily synoptic maps.

In 1875 he became head of the Division of Marine Meteorology of the German naval observatory, where he spent four years producing weather forecasts. Then he moved on to undertake the experimental research that was his main interest.

His use of weather balloons to record conditions in the upper layers of the atmosphere contributed both to meteorological understanding of the atmosphere and to his own development of climate classification. In 1890 he co-authored the first cloud atlas, a collection of colour pictures (photographs and paintings) of various types of clouds with a description and name for the type.

While the nomenclature they used has been superseded, this book was important in spurring on the development of internationally-consistent classifications for cloud types.

Answer: William Morris Davis

William Morris Davis (1850-1934) is sometimes called the Father of American Geography, due to his major contributions to that field. His explanation of the cycle of erosion and the landforms associated with various stages of the cycle led to the development of the field of geomorphology, and was highly significant in its time, although now generally considered over-simplified.

He tied in meteorological data to his work, since weather plays a significant role in the process of erosion. His contributions were not so much to meteorology as a separate science as they were to including it as part of the more unified approach to understanding the physical world.

Answer: Charles Thomson Rees Wilson

The Scottish physicist Charles Thomson Rees Wilson (1869-1959) won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 for developing the cloud chamber, which was a valuable research tool in the exploration of sub-atomic particles. However, it was his earlier research on clouds, starting in 1893, which led him to attempt to reproduce the process of cloud formation in the laboratory, from which work the cloud chamber was an almost incidental consequence. Most of his published research work focused on the meteorological aspects of his work.

Answer: Alfred Wegener

In his time, the German geophysicist Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) was best known for his work in meteorology, including investigation of polar air circulation conducted over a number of voyages to the Arctic (where he died during his fourth trip while trying to prove the existence of the jet stream). He was known as a brilliant lecturer, who could explain the most complex of new ideas in language that was intelligible to the university students in his audience. The text mentioned in the question was a collection of lectures delivered at the University of Marburg in 1908-1910.

In 1912 Wegener put forward a suggestion that the continents are not fixed in place, but slowly moving across the surface of the earth, in a process then called continental drift. It was widely scoffed at then, but from the 1950s it began to become more accepted, and is seen as the starting point for the development of the contemporary model of plate tectonics.