Antiquity

3000 BC � Meteorology in India can be traced back to around 3000 BC, with writings
such as the Upanishads, containing discussions about the processes of cloud
formation and rain and the seasonal cycles caused by the movement of earth round
the sun.[1]

600 BC � Thales may qualify as the first Greek meteorologist. He reputedly issues
the first seasonal crop forecast.

350 BC � The Greek philosopher Aristotle writes Meteorology, a work which

represents the sum of knowledge of the time about earth sciences, including weather
and climate. It is the first known work that attempts to treat a broad range of
meteorological topics.[3] For the first time, precipitation and the clouds from
which precipitation falls are called meteors, which originate from the Greek word
meteoros, meaning 'high in the sky'. From that word comes the modern term
meteorology, the study of clouds and weather.

One of the most impressive achievements in Meteorology is his description of what

is now known as the hydrologic cycle:

Now the sun, moving as it does, sets up processes of change and becoming and decay,
and by its agency the finest and sweetest water is every day carried up and is
dissolved into vapour and rises to the upper region, where it is condensed again by
the cold and so returns to the earth.[4]

1450 � Leone Battista Alberti developed a swinging-plate anemometer, and is known

as the first anemometer.[23]

1494 � During his second voyage Christopher Columbus experiences a tropical cyclone
in the Atlantic Ocean, which leads to the first written European account of a
hurricane

1643 � Evangelista Torricelli invents the mercury barometer.[23]

Blaise Pascal.

1648 � Blaise Pascal rediscovers that atmospheric pressure decreases with

height, and deduces that there is a vacuum above the atmosphere.[31]

1654 � Ferdinando II de Medici sponsors the first weather observing network,

that consisted of meteorological stations in Florence, Cutigliano, Vallombrosa,
Bologna, Parma, Milan, Innsbruck, Osnabr�ck, Paris and Warsaw. Collected data was
centrally sent to Accademia del Cimento in Florence at regular time intervals.[32]

1724 � Gabriel Fahrenheit creates reliable scale for measuring temperature with a
mercury-type thermometer.[35]

1742 � Anders Celsius, a Swedish astronomer, proposed the Celsius temperature

scale which led to the current Celsius scale.[38]

1854 � The French astronomer Leverrier showed that a storm in the Black Sea
could be followed across Europe and would have been predictable if the telegraph
had been used. A service of storm forecasts was established a year later by the
Paris Observatory.

� Rankine introduces his thermodynamic function, later identified as entropy.

1960 � The first successful weather satellite, TIROS-1 (Television Infrared

Observation Satellite), is launched on April 1 from Cape Canaveral, Florida by the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) with the participation of The
US Army Signal Research and Development Lab, RCA, the US Weather Bureau, and the US
Naval Photographic Center. During its 78-day mission, it relays thousands of
pictures showing the structure of large-scale cloud regimes, and proves that
satellites can provide useful surveillance of global weather conditions from space.
[75] TIROS paves the way for the Nimbus program, whose technology and findings are
the heritage of most of the Earth-observing satellites NASA and NOAA have launched
since then.[39]