Section 4

Section four.

You will hear a lecture about the history of weather forecasting.

First you have some time to look at questions 31 to 40.

Now listen carefully and answer questions 31 to 40.

In this series of lectures about the history of weather forecasting, I’ll start by examining its early history that’ll be the subject of today’s talk.

Okay, so we’ll start by going back thousands of years.

Most ancient cultures had weather gods and weather catastrophes such as floods played an important role in many creation myths.

Generally, weather was attributed to the whims of the gods as the wide range of weather gods in various cultures shows, for instance there’s the Egyptian Sun God raaah and Thor the Norse god of thunder and lightning.

Many ancient civilizations developed rights such as dances in order to make the weather gods look kindly on them.

But the weather was of daily importance observing the skies and drawing the correct conclusions from these observations was really important.

In fact, their survival depended on it it.

Isn’t known when people first started to observe the skies, but at around 650 BC the Babylonians produced the first short-range weather forecasts based on their observations of clouds and other phenomena.

The Chinese also recognized weather patterns and by 300 BC astronomers had developed a calendar which divided the year into 24 festivals.

Each associated with a different weather phenomenon.

The ancient Greeks were the first to develop a more scientific approach to explaining the weather.

The work of the philosopher and scientist Aristotle in the 4th century BC is especially noteworthy as his ideas held sway for nearly 2,000 years.

In 340 BC he wrote a book in which he attempted to account for the formation of rain, clouds, wind, and storms.

He also described celestial phenomena such as halos that is bright circles of light around the Sun, the moon, and bright stars and comets.

Many of his observations were surprisingly accurate, for example he believed that heat could cause water to evaporate but he also jumped to quite a few wrong conclusions such as that winds are breathed out by the earth.

Errors like this were rectified from the Renaissance onwards.

For nearly 2,000 years Aristotle’s work was accepted as the chief authority on weather theory.

Alongside this though, in the Middle Ages weather observations were passed on in the form of proverbs such as red sky at night, shepherds delight, red sky in the morning, shepherds warning.

Many of these are based on very good observations and are accurate as contemporary meteorologists have discovered.

For centuries any attempt to forecast the weather could only be based on personal observations, but in the 15th century scientists began to see the need for instruments.

Until then the only ones available were weather vanes to determine the wind direction and early versions of rain gauges. One of the first invented in the 15th century was a hygrometer which measured humidity this was one of many in vengeance that contributed to the development of weather forecasting.

In 1592 the Italian scientist and inventor Galileo developed the world’s first thermometer, his student Tory Shelley later invented the barometer which allowed people to measure atmospheric pressure.

In 1648 the French philosopher Pascal proved that pressure decreases with altitude.

This discovery was verified by English astronomer Holly in 1686 and Holly was also the first person to map trade winds.

This increasing ability to measure factors related to weather helped scientists to understand the atmosphere and its processes better.

And they started collecting weather observation data systematically.

In the 18th century the scientist and politician, Benjamin Franklin, carried out work on electricity and lightning in particular, but he was also very interested in weather and studied it throughout most of his life.

It was Franklin who discovered that storms generally travel from west to east.

In addition to new meteorological instruments other developments contributed to our understanding of the atmosphere.

People in different locations began to keep records and in the mid 19th century the invention of the Telegraph made it possible for these records to be collated.

This led by the end of the 19th century to the first weather services.

It was not until the early 20th century that mathematics and physics became part of meteorology and will continue from that point next week.

That is the end of section four, you now have half a minute to check your answers.

That is the end of the listening test.

In the IELTS test you would now have 10 minutes to transfer your answers to the listening answer sheet.