I watched a little of a BBC programme on an eruption of Tambora some 200
years ago, earlier today.

The narrator made the point that there is a plethora of detailed
meteorological information extant in the logs of His Majesty's Ships of
the time.

It struck me that if it were all posted online for examination in
greater detail it would provide a wealth of useful data for comparing
then and now.

I wonder what "meteorologists" (or whatever the gentlemen of leisure
with sufficient funds and interest to follow the subject might have been
called in those days) would have made of it had they the understanding
of the way that weather works that we now have. I don't mean the cutting
edge knowledge; weather models, super-computers and satellite imagery
but just the schoolboy physics and geography things.

(I hope Andrew Lane doesn't read this, in case he gets an idea to add to
his List of 101 Things To Do Really Badly.)

((Sorry about that last bit but I couldn't mention the BBC without
saying something about that debacle. I noticed though that the BBC
programme "Have I Got News For You" had plenty not to say about it.))

If anyone is interested, there is a CD available from WetterZentrale
that shows pressure charts from as far back as 1899.


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