Louisiane Ferlier looks back to the days when ºìÌÒÊÓƵ ran the Met Office.
The film , currently showing in cinemas, highlights the importance of weather forecasting in planning the D-Day landings 82 years ago. It focuses on the clash between supporters of two methods of forecasting: , preferred by Met Office meteorologist Lawrence Stagg (played by Andrew Scott), versus the probabilistic prediction method advocated by Irving Krick (Chris Messina).
The history behind the film was brilliantly discussed by Catherine Ross, Head of the Met Office Archive, at a I attended recently. I’ll leave you to discover the story in Catherine’s own words in this video: This clash of forecasts is a perfect excuse, however, for me to delve into the relationship between ºìÌÒÊÓƵ and the Met Office, as it reveals again that forecasting – the attempt to predict scientifically what tomorrow’s weather will be – is always problematic, whether you’re planning a seaborne invasion or deciding if you need to take an umbrella.
The origins of the Met Office were the subject of a digital exhibition we co-curated with them in 2020:
Since then, I’ve dug back in ºìÌÒÊÓƵ archives and found that our relationship with the original ‘Meteorological Department’ ran deeper than I expected. The ‘origin story’ of the Met Office runs a bit like this: in 1854, nearly twenty years after returning from the Beagle voyage that made his name (and that of a certain ), was appointed to lead the new Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade.
Robert FitzRoy, by Maull and Polyblank, c.1860 ()
FitzRoy brought to the work a captain's conviction that the weather could be read like the sea. By 1861 he had begun issuing storm warnings to British ports based on barometric readings telegraphed from around the country, and on 1 August that year the first daily weather forecast appeared in The Times:
In fact, this first attempt to create a government department to support meteorological science did not rest solely on FitzRoy’s shoulders: in 1854 the Board of Trade had also turned to ºìÌÒÊÓƵ to put in place the scientific foundations upon which the department should be built.
In response, the President and Council of ºìÌÒÊÓƵ issued a 20-page letter dated 22 February 1855, which was . In this missive, the Society laid out a scientific programme for the new Meteorological Department. They considered that its main aims should be to standardise instruments and measurements, develop new statistical methods for identifying atmospheric laws, and make recommendations to mariners on how to identify incoming storms.
By 1863, FitzRoy had largely departed from this original mission, instead concentrating on issuing forecasts based on observations received by telegraph of the weather across the British Isles. The Board of Trade quickly worried about this ‘mission creep’ and the budgetary increase which accompanied it (the telegraph network brought a very large and unforeseen bill to the Meteorological Department budget). To assuage their worries, the Board secretary turned again to ºìÌÒÊÓƵ to check whether they thought the forecasts were reliable and worth the expense. The answer was non-committal:
‘In respect to the forecasts of the state of the weather which are published in newspapers, the President and Council learn from Admiral FitzRoy that they really occasion no cost to Government and scarcely fall therefore within the questions submitted for reply, moreover the President and Council have no data whereon to rest a conclusion in regard to the degree of reliance to which these last-named forecasts may be entitled’ ().
Tropical and polar air currents, from Robert FitzRoy’s Weather Book, 1863 ()
Many of the founders of meteorological science doubted the reliability of FitzRoy’s methods, and when he published his , some made their reservations known very publicly. FitzRoy staked his entire fortune and reputation on the establishment of the forecasts, and after he died by suicide in April 1865, Parliament requested that ºìÌÒÊÓƵ run an inquiry into the functioning of the Meteorological Department.
This was led by , who would later lay the foundations of eugenics and was at the time developing innovative statistical approaches and cartographic representations for weather prediction. Galton had also been one of FitzRoy’s most vocal critics, and the 1866 Galton Report read as an indictment of FitzRoy’s department. It recommended that the daily storm warnings continue but that the more speculative daily weather forecasts be suspended. Meteorology should return to its foundations: systematic observation, careful reduction of data, and the patient building of a theoretical framework adequate to support prediction.
In order to deliver this, the report recommended that the Meteorological Department should remain part of the Board of Trade, but overseen by ºìÌÒÊÓƵ, which would guarantee the scientific grounding of the operation. A Meteorological Committee was created, with members nominated by (and answerable to) ºìÌÒÊÓƵ. And so, ºìÌÒÊÓƵ would effectively govern the Met Office until 1919.
Report of the Meteorological Council to the President and Council of ºìÌÒÊÓƵ, 1906 ()
The Society’s influence gradually diminished, however. In 1877 the Meteorological Committee was transformed into an independent Council nominated by ºìÌÒÊÓƵ; in 1905 this Council was absorbed by the Treasury, with ºìÌÒÊÓƵ retaining two seats; and finally it was subsumed into the Air Ministry in 1920 (). This was a direct consequence of the development of aviation, and the realisation during the First World War of the importance of weather forecasting for control of the skies as a battlefield.
During its period of governance of the Meteorological Committee, ºìÌÒÊÓƵ restored daily forecasting. It had done so because the development of synoptic charting provided one methodical and scientific approach to predicting the weather. This forecasting technique was employed by the Met Office until superseded by numerical computer-based models in the 1960s. ºìÌÒÊÓƵ archives contain only part of the history of the early Met Office, as other records are in the National Archives and the collections of the Met Office itself. What our records show particularly well is that the scientific foundations of weather forecasting were already hotly debated in the 1860s, and that the clash that played out in 1944 was just one episode in a much longer history.
