How We Measure the Weather: A Brief History And Where We’re Going Next James Hyde December 10, 2025 at ESJ 2204
The presentation highlighted the progression of meteorology from its start to the intricate systems used today. The earliest scientific challenge was "Quantifying the Invisible," which meant creating instruments to measure key atmospheric variables: temperature, pressure, and humidity. I did not know that the first meteorological instrument, developed around 1608, quantified temperature change by measuring the change in volume of materials like water or mercury in glass. The second instrument, for pressure, appeared around 1650, at the same time as explorations into the force of vacuum. Additionally, around 1650, the third instrument for humidity was invented. I found it super interesting to learn that it used hair from beards, horses, or humans to sense moisture because the hair would change length with humidity.
By around 1750, instruments had been improved to be accurate against known standards and people started comparing measurements across distances to develop relationships between observations. A major turning point came in 1825 with the telegraph. We briefly talked about the telegraph in high school, so I knew a little bit of background about this topic. This allowed ship and land reports to be combined by 1850, leading to the creation of daily pressure charts.
The presentation also covered how the shift into the digital age has impacted the field of meteorology. Stations have lost human observers during times like World War II and the detailed observations that people used to physically write down were replaced by shortened data, sometimes just three numbers: high temperature, low temperature, and precipitation level. So by 1900, instruments could record continuously, but humans still had to interpret the data. Through this, I found it really interesting that the world record of 1.23 inches of rain in one minute was in Uniontown, MD, on July 4, 1956.
Today, we face a major problem: modern weather instruments often lack proper quality control, meaning their trustworthiness varies greatly. This is an issue because current databases treat all instruments the same, which can lead to inaccurate climate data. For example, instruments are often placed poorly, such as on highways, in rocky areas, or on roofs, which negatively affects long-term climate data.
The final part of the presentation focused on what comes next. Modern systems, like the Maryland Mesonet, take observations every three seconds to capture more accurate data. The Mesonet is a key part of the future, serving as a state-wide network and trusted advisor. It measures many things, including temperature, wind speed, dewpoint, rainfall, and soil temperature. The immediate next steps include improving data visualization and summaries and better data integration and aggregation.
The main points of the presentation are mostly believable. This is especially true because the history supports it, like how the telegraph helped share information faster. The idea of the Maryland Mesonet being the answer to better quality control is strong because a good network that is checked often makes sense for fixing the problem of bad data. However, the speaker's claim about many instruments having poor quality control has a possible flaw in thinking called sampling bias. This happens because they seemed to use only a few examples to talk about the quality of thousands of other instruments. This lack of wide evidence makes the problem seem less proven, even though the Mesonet solution is a good one. Overall, I enjoyed learning about the evolution of meteorology and how current technology is working to fix problems to improve future forecasting.