2.4
Carl-Gustaf Rossby and the Development of Aeronautical Meteorology
Roger D. Turner, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Development of commercial air transportation in the 1920s created new demands for weather prediction. Safe and efficient carriage of passengers and airmail required information about storms, fog, and upper level route winds. The twice-daily US Weather Bureau national forecasts were inadequate. In 1927, The Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics attempted to meet pilots' needs by establishing a sophisticated meteorological service to provide flight forecasts for pilots flying between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Organized by Bergen School-trained meteorologist Carl-Gustaf Rossby, this service featured a relatively dense network of observing stations and systems for communicating between ground stations and from ground stations to aircraft. This paper will explore how the Guggenheim-funded airways weather service became the model for airline meteorological services between the time of its founding until it was turned over to the Weather Bureau in July 1929. This history also offers an example of the roundabout ways that novel scientific practices can be absorbed into intellectually conservative institutions. While the Weather Bureau had rather unceremoniously parted ways with Rossby just two years before, by 1929 it was being instructed by the Assistant Secretary of Commerce (Aeronautics) to take up Rossby's operation, which had been based on Bergen School methodology.
Session 2, Historical Climate and Weather Issues
Tuesday, 13 January 2004, 1:30 PM-2:45 PM, Room 2A
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