16 questions · Nature
The planet's extremes and the people who made them measurable. Recognise the 56.7 degrees from Death Valley and the minus 89.2 of Vostok Station, the German heat record of 41.2 degrees, the Atacama as driest and Mawsynram as rainiest place, plus the strongest gust ever measured at 408 kilometres per hour. The second half is about measuring and forecasting: Torricelli and the barometer, Fahrenheit and Celsius, Francis Beaufort and his wind scale, the German Weather Service, radiosondes on weather balloons and Meteosat in orbit: through to Vilhelm Bjerknes, who turned forecasting into a calculation, and the butterfly effect that sets its limit. Good to know: The record dates from 10 July 1913 at Furnace Creek in California. Experts still argue about whether that old measurement was truly reliable. The Russian research station sits on the Antarctic plateau. At that cold, exhaled breath freezes instantly into fine ice crystals. Measured on 25 July 2019 in Duisburg-Baerl and Tönisvorst. The old record fell several times within two days back then.
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Death Valley
The record dates from 10 July 1913 at Furnace Creek in California.
💡 Did you know? Experts still argue about whether that old measurement was truly reliable.
Vostok Station
The Russian research station sits on the Antarctic plateau.
💡 Did you know? At that cold, exhaled breath freezes instantly into fine ice crystals.
41.2 degrees
Measured on 25 July 2019 in Duisburg-Baerl and Tönisvorst.
💡 Did you know? The old record fell several times within two days back then.
Atacama
In parts of the Atacama no measurable rain was recorded for decades.
💡 Did you know? Its dryness makes it the best site in the world for large telescopes.
Mawsynram
It receives around 11,000 millimetres of rain in an average year.
💡 Did you know? That is about fifteen times as much as Berlin: the monsoon delivers nearly all of it.
408 km/h
Measured in 1996 on Barrow Island in Australia during a cyclone.
💡 Did you know? Mount Washington in the USA held the previous record for decades.
Evangelista Torricelli
The Italian was a pupil of Galileo Galilei.
💡 Did you know? The old pressure unit torr is named after him.
Fahrenheit
Fahrenheit built the first reliable mercury thermometer in 1714.
💡 Did you know? The USA still measures in Fahrenheit; almost everywhere else uses Celsius.
Anders Celsius
The Swedish astronomer proposed a hundred-step scale in 1742.
💡 Did you know? Celsius's original was reversed: 0 was boiling point and 100 freezing point.
Francis Beaufort
The British admiral recorded it in his log in 1806; the Royal Navy officially adopted it in 1838.
💡 Did you know? He described the wind by how much sail a ship could still carry.
German Weather Service
The DWD is based in Offenbach am Main.
💡 Did you know? It runs several thousand measuring stations in Germany, many staffed by volunteers.
radiosonde
It radios temperature, humidity and pressure back to Earth from up to 30 kilometres.
💡 Did you know? Around 1500 such balloons go up worldwide every day, mostly at 0 and 12 UTC sharp.
seven to ten days
Beyond that the atmosphere becomes fundamentally unpredictable.
💡 Did you know? Today's three-day forecast is as accurate as the one-day forecast was forty years ago.
butterfly effect
Meteorologist Edward Lorenz stumbled on it in the 1960s while running models.
💡 Did you know? His famous image: a butterfly flapping in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas.
Vilhelm Bjerknes
In 1904 the Norwegian argued that forecasting is a computational physics problem.
💡 Did you know? His „Bergen School“ also coined the terms warm front and cold front still used today.
Meteosat
Meteosat satellites sit geostationary above the equator and deliver continuous images.
💡 Did you know? The first Meteosat launched in 1977, since then Europe has unbroken satellite coverage.
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