[Book review] "Stalin's Meteorologist" by Olivier Rolin (translated from French by Ros Schwartz)

This is a fascinating book. The story of "love, life, and death" of Alexey Feodosievich Wangenheim (1881–1937) a Russian meteorologist who in 1929 became the director of Soviet Union's Hydro-Meteorological Service. Amongst other contributions, Wangenheim, together with his subordinate Sergei Petrovich Khromov, had helped introduce into the meteorological community from the Soviet Union the "Norwegian theory" (i.e., the Norwegian cyclone model) developed within the Bergen School of Meteorology. One of the early contributors to the Norwegian theory was the Swedish meteorologist Tor Bergeron (1891–1977) who has been invited to lecture Moscow in 1930 and 1932. Bergeron's lectures had a considerable impact on the progress of meteorology in the Soviet Union. Inspired by these lectures, Wangenheim translated some of Bergeron's papers and Khromov published a paper in a scientific journal (lead by Wangenheim) entitled "New ideas in meteorology and their philosophical implications". Khromov will also publish in 1934 the first textbook in Russian on the Norwegian cyclone model, largely based on Bergeron's lectures. Khromov's paper raised the attention of other members of the Hydro-Meteorological Service of the Soviet Union who pointed out that Lenin's works are not mentioned in the article. To aggravate the matter even further, Stalin's works were not, as recommended, cited by Khromov in his paper. As a consequence, Wangenheim ended up being accused of promoting a theory that was "the heap of rubbish deliberately spread by enemy hands" and also of organising and leading counterrevolutionary sabotage work in the Hydro-Meteorological Service. Interestingly, in the accusation (i.e., promoting the Norwegian cyclone model one of the cornerstones of weather forecasting) the sabotage appeared as aimed at depriving the Soviet Union agriculture of the means to forecast the weather in general and droughts, in particular. 

In 1934, after being hailed previously by Stalin as a national hero (for example, Wangenheim organised in 1932 the first conference on the influence on climate on humans, perhaps the first such conference in the world), Wangenheim was arrested and deported to a Soviet prison camp. He will spend the next three years on the Solovetsky Islands, the site of the first Gulag. In the Solovetsky Islands, Wangenheim worked in the library of the prison and even lectured on meteorological subjects, like "the conquest of the stratosphere." From Solovetsky, Wangenheim wrote letters to his daughter Eleonora (1930–2012). These letters containing puzzles, or detailed descriptions and drawings of the flora and fauna of the Solovetsky Islands, were intended to play a role in the education of Eleonora (who would later become a paleontologist). In 1937 the events took a sinister turn. Wangenheim was executed together with other prisoners in November 1937 and then buried in a mass grave. 

Drawing from a letter of Alexey Wangenheim to his daughter Eleonora. [via Wikipedia Commons]

To me, the book was a page-turner, part history, part reportage, part biography. I highly recommend this book about "a man, neither a scientific genius nor a great poet, who was interested in clouds and did drawings for his daughter, caught up in a history that was an orgy of blood [i.e., the Great Terror (1937–1938)]."

What we know so far about tornadoes in Europe?

Today I have submitted to Monthly Weather Review a manuscript written together with David M. Schultz and Fiona Lomas (University of Manchester) on European tornadoes. The manuscript, a synthesis of the European tornado datasets, is also a short history of tornado observations in Europe and a literature review of the major contributions on tornado research in Europe.  

There are three reasons for which we believe that this research was necessary. First, there is not a widespread recognition or the threat of tornadoes in Europe, and this lead to an underestimate of the importance of tornadoes in the current climate in Europe. Second, to better understand the climatology of tornadoes in Europe we need to understand the evolution of tornado databases for different European countries and to identifying the major influences on the development of these databases. Third,  when considering the possible influence of climate change on severe convective storms, the first step is to consider the
observational data. Without knowing what is occurring now, how many tornadoes occur each
year in Europe, and what is the current spatial distribution of tornadoes, all the analyses
of the influence of climate change on tornadoes are premature.

We hoped that this manuscript of the current knowledge on tornadoes in Europe [in a way, this is a companion paper to Groenemeijer & Kühne (2014)] will encourage further discussions and stimulate the interest of the scientific community, national meteorological services and the public on European tornadoes. We hope that this would result in increased awareness, in the identification of new data sources, or in the initiation of new databases that would allow a extension of the current European tornado database both in time and in space. 

You can read the draft of the paper here.

Cosmic Meteorology (1623) by Robert Fludd

Recently, browsing through Gallica, the digital library of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, I have found this book, containing illustrations from the Cosmic Meteorology by Robert Fludd. I was sufficiently intrigued to try to find more about the book, especially because one of the illustrations contained, among other meteorological phenomena, a representation of a tornado.

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Robert Fludd (1574 –1637) (image courtesy of Smithsonian Library).

Philosophia Sacra et Vere Christiana seu Meteorologia Cosmica was first published by Théodore de Bry at Frankfurt  in 1623. I was to some extent familiar with the author, Robert Fludd, through the works of Frances Yates (1899 –1981). Robert Fludd (1574 –1637), an English mystic, philosopher, alchemist, scientist and musician, was educated at Oxford and practised medicine in London. In addition to his medical practice, influenced by the doctrines of Paracelsus (1493–1541), he published a large number of books, richly illustrated and covering medical, practical and speculative topics in an attempt to reconcile the mysticism with the science of 17th Century.  In the Cosmic Meteorology, Fludd applies the word meteor not only to meteorological phenomena but also to planets, starts and comets. 

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Fig.1 - Frontispiece of Philosophia Sacra et Vere Christiana seu Meteorologia Cosmica  (Frankfurt, 1623) with engravingsby Matthäus Merian ( 1593 –1650). (image courtesy of Gallica)

 The frontispiece of the book (Fig.1) shows, according to Godwin (1979) the effects of the macrocosmic meteors and in particular of the wind. The wind played a central role in Fludd's medical speculations, since was capable to carry the good (from angels) and the bad (from demons) influences (lower centre). One illustration from the frontispiece shows the beneficial effects of the winds (lower right), the others are showing the detrimental effects: an earthquake, produce by the wind bellow the earth's surface (lower right), a "rain of fire" (upper left), a thunderstorm producing rain, lighting and hail (upper centre) and a thunderstorm at sea (upper right). The left and right middle panels are showing different types of comets (right) and parhelia (sundogs, left).   

The most fascinating illustration by Matthäus Merian (1593 –1650) from Cosmic Meteorology is the Great Meteorological Chart (Fig. 2). In Godwin's (1979) interpretation, God is represented on the top of the chart and the semicircles contains representations of all the meteorological phenomena. Different types of comets are represented first, followed clouds and their associated phenomena: whirlwind and a tornado (turbo and prester as fiery exhalations, left) (Fig. 3),  blood (gutta sanguinia), stone (lapides) and frog (rane) rains and lightning (fulmen) (centre) and hail (grando), rain (pluuia) and shown (nix) (right).  

Below the clouds are represented the twelve winds and at the surface there is an other representation of a whirlwind (turbo) (centre) (Fig. 4).  On the lower left is a list of "meteors sent for man's benefit" (i.e., wind, whirlwinds, cold, ice, rain, lightning) and on the lower right a list of "meteors sent for man's chastisement or punishment" (i.e., fiery whirlwinds, with and without demons; lighting, hail) (Godwind, 1979).    

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Fig. 2 - The Great Meteorological Chart from Cosmic Meteorology (1626) by Robert Fludd. (image courtesy of archive.rog) (click here more details).

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Fig. 3 - Detail (lower left) from The Great Meteorological Chart showing a whirlwind (turbo) and a tornado (prester, fiery exhalation). (image courtesy of archive.rog)

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Fig. 4 - Detail (lower left) from The Great Meteorological Chart showing a whirlwind (turbo). (image courtesy of archive.rog)

The Great Meteorological Chart, despite being a part of a mystical text, is a very interesting summary of the knowledge on meteorological phenomena in the 17th Century.

References

Godwin, J., 1979: Robert Fludd, Hermetic Philosopher and Surveyor of Two Worlds. Thames and Hudson, p. 96.  

Waterspout over the Tyrrhenian Sea on June 1827

I have found this week entry on the "Gallery" via a Google search. Someone was selling a beautiful lithography from 1828 entitle "Phénomène de trombes marines" for the small sum of £1200. The lithography showed a series of waterspouts and my initial thinking was that this is an artistic representations of various types waterspouts  (similar with the "Diagram of Meteorology" by John Emslie). Since I was curious to find more about it, I have tried to find a high resolution reproduction. I have found one in the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, which is showed bellow.  

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Waterspouts on the Tyrrhenian Sea on 27 June 1827. Courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France. [click on the image for a high resolution version]

The caption reads: "Waterspouts phenomenon observed in the sea of Sicily [i.e., Tyrrhenian Sea], toward Stromboli [showed on the left of the image] 27 June 1827, and drawn by L. Mazzara [i.e., Louis Mazzara], aboard the brigantine Portia, Cabbage captain, when the ship fired on the waterspout [showed on the right of the image]." Félix Achille Saint-Aulaire made the engraving based on a drawing by Louis Mazzara and the lithography was published in 1828 by Godefroy Engelmann. Unfortunately, I could not find more informations about this event except for a short description in "Météorologie" (1841) by Jean Charles Athanase Peltier which indicated that the lithography shows a family of seven waterspouts. This is similar with another event that occurred on August 1999 between Corfu and Othonoi islands, in Greek waters, which shows a family of four waterspouts.  [Thanks to Stavros Dafis, who is studying this event, for providing informations on the location.]

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Waterspouts between Corfu and Othonoi islands, in Greek waters on August 1999. The picture was taken by Roberto Giudici on a boat trip to Brindisi (Italy) (©Roberto Giudici).

If you have other informations about the event form 27 June 1827, I would be very interested to hear from you and understand more about the story behind the lithography.  

An early contribution to the study of tornadoes in Romania

One of the few tornadoes reported in Romania during the socialist period (1945–1989, Antonescu and Bell 2015) occurred on 9 May 1963 at Satu Mare (Raionul Rădăuți in 1963, Suceava County today, Fig. 1). In the same year an article, analysing the evolution of the tornado, was published by V. Țigănescu in Natura (The Nature) a scientific journal devoted to Geography and Geology*.  The article contains probably the most detailed description of the evolution, damages and atmospheric conditions associated with a tornado that occurred in Romania before 2002, when an F3+ long-track tornado crossing through southeastern Romania was responsible for at least three fatalities in the village of Făcăeni (Lemon et al. 2003). Țigănescu (1963) mentions at the beginning of the article, that tornadoes (he uses landspouts - trombe de uscat) do occur in Romania but they are rare events and that the tornado from Satu Mare offers a good opportunity to analyse them. 

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Fig. 1 - Spatial distribution of tornado reports during the socialist period (7 reports between 1945 and 1989) in Romania. Tornadoes were classified according to their intensity on the F scale for weak tornadoes (F0 or F1) (yellow) and significant tornadoes (F2 and F3) (red). Tornadoes for which an estimation of the intensity was not possible are represented in blue. The yellow rectangle highlights the location of the Satu Mare tornado. [Adapted from Fig. 4 in Antonescu and Bell 2015.]

The tornado was first observed around 12:30 local time (14:30 UTC) as "a column of dens air stretching form the clouds to the ground". At the beginning, a fifth of the column was black and the rest was white. Once the funnel cloud reached the ground, the base of the column darkened and the debris clearly indicated the rotation of the column (Fig. 2). Based on eyewitnesses reports and damages surveys, Țigănescu (1963) estimated that hight of the "column" was 600–800 m with a diameter of 30–40 m, the path length was approximately 5.5 km from southeast to northwest and the duration between 15–20 minutes. (Some of the eyewitnesses described the tornado as a dragon, see this post for more details about the dragons and tornadoes in Romania.) 

After a short description of the atmospheric conditions associated with the tornado occurrence, Țigănescu (1963) concluded that tornadoes can occur in other parts of Romania if "the right conditions arise" (i.e., "an exceptional difference in air density in a relatively small space") and that some of these tornadoes can be high impact events. Unfortunatelly, Țigănescu's study did not had an impact on the meteorological community and for the next 25 years was believed that tornadoes do not occur in Romania (Antonescu and Bell 2015).  

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Fig. 2 - The tornado seen from northwest (left) and west (right). The phases indicates the descent of the funnel cloud. This is one of the earliest representation of a tornado published in the Romanian scientific literature. [Adapted from Figs. 3 and 4 in Tiganescu (1963).]

[*) The article:  Țigănescu, V, 1963: Tromba de uscat de la Satu Mare - Rădăuți. Natura (Seria Geografie-Geologie), 5, 43–51, is available here, courtesy of the University of Manchester Library and "Carol I" Central University Library in Bucharest. ]