Air Apparent: How Meteorologists Learned to Map, Predict, and Dramatize Weather
Dateline: 10/01/00
No other scientific discipline or government enterprise is as pervasively cartographic as meteorology yet so disconnected from the community of professional cartographers. (p. 213)Geographer and cartographic chronicler Mark Monmonier's latest book, Air Apparent: How Meteorologists Learned to Map, Predict, and Dramatize Weather focuses on the disconnected field of weather maps. Monmonier (author of How To Lie With Maps) takes readers through the history of weather maps from their roots in the nineteenth century to the plethora of weather information available online and via television networks such as the Weather Channel.
Monmonier writes that the weather map was invented in Europe in 1819 when Heinrich Wilhelm Brandes mapped the weather observed across Europe on 365 maps for the year 1783. Despite the 36 year delay in mapping the data, Brandes' development was heralded as quite the novelty - weather data had been collected for decades through observers across Europe (who used the mail to report their observations) but no one had thought to map this spatial data. Even weather symbols appeared before weather maps.
The 1862 invention of the telegraph helped improve communication between weather observers and weather headquarters. The Smithsonian Institution developed the first telegraphic weather observer network, collecting data from across the United States and mapping it on a large map at the Institution's headquarters. This network died during the Civil War.
Following the war, the U.S. Army's Signal Corps began collecting and mapping weather data and in 1891 the Weather Bureau (eventually known as the National Weather Service) was created as a civilian government agency.
From the turn of the century to today, Monmonier traces developments in the history of forecasting, including the development of satellite technology and imagery, radar, and NEXRAD (Next Generation Radar). Monmonier devotes a chapter to the weather information contained in newspapers and devotes a chapter to the history of weather on television and on the Internet. With one exception, the remaining ten chapters are devoted to the broad history of weather recording and mapping and Monmonier's suggestions for increasing the collaboration between cartography and meteorology.
The exceptional chapter is chapter six, "Downwind Dangers," 16 pages in the 309-page book (232 pages of true content) which discusses the possible spread of hazardous toxins in the air. It has little to do with the history of weather mapping at all and seemed to me to be simply a left over chapter from Monmonier's 1997 book Cartographies of Danger: Mapping Hazards in America. I'm not sure why Monmonier included chapter six in this book but it sticks out like a sore thumb for those who expect to be reading about meteorological cartography.
Despite the mystery chapter, Monmonier's books as marvelous - he's an excellent writer who's woven together a fascinating story of the ancillary discipline that produces more maps than even geography. Air Apparent paves the way for additional research into the maps used by newspapers, television, and on the Internet to tell the story of climate and weather to the public and specialists alike. It's a must-read for the cartographically curious, weather (or Weather Channel) buffs, and, of course, fans of Mark Monmonier's work.
