From Folklore to High-Tech

BAMS spoke with author Brian Clegg about his new book Weather Science: How Meteorology has Gone from Folklore to High-Tech. Clegg has written numerous other science titles, including Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang, A Brief History of Infinity, Gravity, Extra Sensory, and Dice World, which was on the longlist for the 2014 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. He has also written regular columns, features, and reviews for numerous magazines and newspapers. Clegg has given sold-out lectures at the Royal Institution in London and has spoken at venues from Oxford and Cambridge Universities to the Cheltenham Festival of Science. Clegg is also editor of the Popular Science book review site.

BAMS: Why write this book?
Clegg: I’m British, and it’s well known that we talk of very little else but the weather. More seriously, I did some work a while back with the Met Office, the United Kingdom’s national weather bureau, and seeing what was involved there made me want to dig into the history and science of our understanding of weather.

BAMS: Who is it for?
Clegg: It’s very much for the general reader. The idea is to dig in a little more and both explain some of the more obscure things we hear in weather forecasts but also put our understanding of the weather into context. It was also interesting to go a little beyond the conventional aspects of weather systems and forecasting to take in natural phenomena that interact with the weather, such as volcanic eruptions, attempts at weather control, and the relationship between understanding the weather and climate change.

BAMS: What obstacles did you face?
Clegg: If I’m honest, although weather systems are extremely complex, weather science is very approachable compared with some of the topics I’ve covered in the past, such as quantum physics or infinity. It was a pleasure to write about it.

BAMS: What did you learn?
Clegg: I think it’s important when making science accessible to include plenty of stories to give context to the scientific information. The one I knew least about and was fascinated to learn more about was the remarkable details of Irving Langmuir’s attempts at weather control. Langmuir was a Nobel Prize–winning chemist who started by attempting to make it snow and rain, then moved onto attempting to change the direction of movement of a hurricane. Not only is it a great story in its own right, it underlines how little evidence there is that it is possible in any controlled fashion, despite claims up to this day.

BAMS: What surprised you?
Clegg: The story I open with is the arrival of Hurricane Katrina at the U.S. mainland in 2005. While I was aware of it causing considerable damage, I really hadn’t taken in the scale of the devastation, with around 1.5 million people forced to evacuate (of which 40% were never able to return) and over 1,500 dead in Louisiana alone. This really brings home how big of an impact weather can have on everyday life.

BAMS: What are the implications of this work?
Clegg: Weather is interesting in its own right, but as we look into it, when looking at the more dramatic aspects from flash flooding to hurricanes, we are reminded just how much we are still at the mercy of the weather. We might understand it far better, moving from folklore to hi-tech, but the reality is that weather still has a huge impact on everyday lives. Anyone who is involved in farming will tell you how changing weather patterns are influencing their livelihoods. Amazing though our technology is, the weather is still a dramatic force in our lives, and it’s good to know more about it.

BAMS: Where do you go from here?
Clegg: One advantage of being a science writer rather than a working scientist is that I can change direction entirely and look at something very different that interests me. I’ve just had a book out called Brainjacking, which explores the science behind the way that we use story to inform, influence, and manipulate other people’s thinking. Ranging from advertising and social media to nudges and subliminal advertising, I have found digging into the field amazing.