METEOROLOGY AND LITERATURE

FROM THE ARCHIVES

A Librarian's Perspective

As a librarian and archivist, my stock in trade consists of books and the information presented in them. Books are the finished product, while archives reveal piecemeal the sources of these published ideas, arguments, research, theories, and conclusions. Meteorology is a science and scientific discipline that has evolved from the accumulation of specific-and sometimes minuscule-written observations and measurements into powerful computer models for prediction and satellite-generated depictions of natural phenomena and patterns. Unlike scientific disciplines that seem to glorify immutable properties or the once-and-for-all-time proof of natural laws, meteorology has long rewarded the collection, examination, and reexamination of data, observations, and measurements from the field to define the history of past conditions and help predict future events.

Several collections in the AMS archives illustrate that the tradition of such data acquisition remained virtually unchanged through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. Most extensive are the notebooks and scrapbooks of Abbott Lawrence Rotch, founder in 1885 of the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory as a private scientific center for the study and measurement of the atmosphere. Rotch was an indefatigable observer and traveler who chronicled his meteorological experiences in his own notebooks and collected published accounts of meteorological events in scrapbooks that date from his time at Blue Hill. He turned these pieces of information into detailed and lively memoranda, often published in Monthly Weather Review. These have been of continuing use to researchers constructing the history of turn-of-thecentury scientific cooperation and communication.

Rotch's manuscript notebooks, recently "discovered" while the AMS staff was packing archival materials to be stored off-site during renovation of our Boston Headquarters, consist of meticulous notations of observations of local conditions from wherever he happened to be, and notes of conversations with his counterparts at other observatories and at meetings. This constitutes a fascinating account of the beginnings of an organized discipline.

Scholars and researchers regularly return to previous publications with improved technological methods that allow for reassessment or far more sophisticated analysis. A very timely example, in this year of the 50th anniversary of numerical weather prediction, is the return to the calculations of Lewis Fry Richardson to show how the reapplication and initialization of his data will produce more likely and reasonable forecast results. Richardson's monograph, published in 1922 as Weather Prediction by Numerical Process, relied on manual calculations, yet anticipated the effectiveness of computers for such hard work. Peter Lynch, assistant director of the Irish Meteorological Service, will present an explication of how Richardson's forecast can be properly worked out at the AMS-sponsored Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of Operational Numerical Weather Prediction at College Park, Maryland in June (see http:// wwwt.ncep.noaa.gov/nwp50/Agenda/Monday/ for more information). Another recent example of building on previous publications is the new monograph on snowflakes, The Snowflake: Winter's Secret Beauty, by Kenneth Libbrecht, which uses the work of Wilson Bentley, the "Snowflake Man," as a point of departure.

While many disciplines have virtually abandoned literature-based research and communication, this method is alive and flourishing in meteorology. From the rime-encrusted observers on Mount Washington manually recording measurements with paper and pen, to paleoclimatologists who mine ever-expanding and surprising sources of ancient data and information, the literature of meteorology and climate is consistently being enriched. Library builders Abbott Lawrence Rotch and his successor and AMS founder, Charles Franklin Brooks, were wise to build strong collections that will continue to serve AMS staff and researchers in their ongoing work.

For more information on the AMS library and archives, please contact me at jnathans@ametsoc.org.

-JINNY NATHANS