




































 History of Meteorology 7 (2015) 

 
 

 

71 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Geographers, Stats-men and Sages: 

Approaches to Climatology in Britain post-1945 
 

Alexander Hall 

alexander.hall@newman.ac.uk  

Newman University, Birmingham 

 

 

In the year 2000 the UK conservation charity the Woodland Trust launched the Nature’s 

Calendar Survey, a project that encourages members of the public to log observations of 

annual natural phenomena, such as the first blackthorn blossom. The study of the times of 

these recurring natural phenomena in relation to climate, known as phenology, dates back 

to at least the eighteenth century in Britain.
1
 Now with 15 years of data and nearly 50,000 

people across the United Kingdom participating, the Nature’s Calendar Survey has 

successfully resurrected an amateur tradition not in existence in the UK at the national 

scale, since the Royal Meteorological Society discontinued its national phenological 

network in 1948. The Nature’s Calendar Survey, and the wider citizen science movement 

it is part of are now not only engaging the public and amateur groups with science, but 

are giving these interested parties a participatory role in contemporary scientific 

research.
2
 As important actors in the scientific, political, and public domains of climate 

change discourse have failed to agree on the existence, causes and solutions to 

anthropogenic climate change, scholarship in the humanities has increasingly begun to 

emphasise the importance of such a reconnection between cultural and public 

understandings of climate and professional climate studies.
3
 A clearer understanding of 

the diverse perspectives of climate across time and space—climate’s “elusive identity”—

is imperative for meaningful progression in addressing the societal implications of 

anthropogenic climate change.
4
  

Today what is recognised as climatology, especially in popular and media 

discourses, is a discipline focused on regional, hemispheric and global modelling of 

climate, and particularly, climatic change. Focused on climate projections at the large-

                                                           
1
 T.H. Sparks and P.D. Carey, “The Responses of Species to Climate Over Two Centuries: An Analysis of 

the Marsham Phenological Record, 1736-1947,” Journal of Ecology 83 (1995) 321-329.  
2
 A. Lawrence, “The first cuckoo in winter: Phenology, recording, credibility and meaning in Britain,” 

Global Environmental Change 19 (2009) 173-179.  
3
 M. Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and 

Opportunity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); V. Janković and C. Barboza (Eds.), Weather, 

local knowledge and everyday life (Rio de Janeiro: Mast, 2009). 
4
 J. R. Fleming, “Climate, Change, History,” Environment and History 20 (2014): 577. 

mailto:alexander.hall@newman.ac.uk


 History of Meteorology 7 (2015) 

 
 

 

72 

scale and reliant on computers and satellite technology, this incarnation of the discipline 

which emerged in the latter half of the twentieth-century is often opaque and inaccessible 

to the lay person.
5
 As mainstream climatology today becomes ever more complex, 

numerical, abstract, and homogenised in its approach, it is increasingly important for 

historians to highlight the connections and lineages of these modern methods to earlier 

antecedent ways of understanding climate and climatic change.  

Modern climatology relies on a conceptualisation of the Earth that considers its 

climate as a single global physical system. The coalescence and popularisation of this 

idea was a protracted international endeavour, which began in the late nineteenth-century 

and was still ongoing into the 1950s.
6
 Although the focus of this paper is the United 

Kingdom, I aim to situate UK developments within this international context. Histories of 

meteorology often present the development of the discipline during the twentieth-century 

as one characterised by the emergence of three distinct sub-fields, bounded by their 

methodological approaches: forecasting (applied meteorology), physical (theoretical 

meteorology), and empirical (climatology).
7
 Whilst in this paper I do not contest this 

reading, I hope to show that it is only part of the picture. A greater understanding of the 

discipline can be gained by also exploring the interaction between the above three 

approaches, other non-professional approaches, and antecedent methods no longer 

widespread today. In doing so, we can address Jim Fleming’s recent call for climate 

histories with a “focus on the diversity of agency and the inclusion of formerly excluded 

or subaltern groups.”
8
 

Therefore, this paper focuses on types of climatology that were prevalent before 

the emergence of computer- and satellite-led modelling of the 1950s and beyond. I hope 

to provide a snapshot of various activities in post-war Britain that were understood at the 

time as climatological study. The paper focuses on three loosely bound groupings of 

practitioners, defined largely by their methodological approaches, backgrounds, and 

institutional affiliations. The sages of my title encompass those working in an amateur 

tradition with no formal meteorological training, who, despite the formalisation of 

amateur networks in the second half of the nineteenth-century, continued to approach the 

study of climate in a folkloric tradition informed by local, traditional knowledge. 

Throughout the paper I use the term ‘amateur’ to mean both those who practice 

meteorology as a past-time and those that have no formal education in the field. However 

as we shall see, for a nascent and professionalising discipline such as climatology, the 

boundary between amateur and professional, or trained and self-taught, is not always 

clear. The stats-men of my title are those who sought to empirically record the climate. 

By the post-war period, they often had some level of meteorological training and were 

working as part of formalised professional or amateur networks. This grouping includes 

most climatologists working at the UK’s national meteorological service, the 

Meteorological Office (MO), who were engaged in the compilation of data and its 

application using simple statistical techniques for location specific enquiries. The 

                                                           
5
 P. N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming 

(Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2010): Introduction. 
6
 J. R. Fleming, Historical Perspectives on Climate Change (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998). 

7
 F. Nebeker, Calculating the Weather: Meteorology in the Twentieth Century (San Diego: Academic Press, 

1995); Edwards 2010, 61-82.  
8
 Fleming 2014, 582 



 History of Meteorology 7 (2015) 

 
 

 

73 

geographers of my title, while sharing a common tradition, training and background with 

many of the stats-men, were a small contingent of formally trained climatologists who 

had begun to consider climate in a more dynamic, regional and temporally sensitive 

manner. Although heavily reliant on compiled climatological data, this group of climate 

researchers were beginning to develop more analytical approaches, creating coded or 

standardised data series and connecting their research to the latest theoretical 

understandings of atmospheric dynamics. 

Rather than considering these groups as contemporaneously defined entities, I 

encourage the reader to view these groupings as fluid and overlapping. The groupings 

function as an analytical tool to elucidate what is a transitional and historically messy 

period in climatology’s history. This paper shows that despite their disparate approaches, 

rather than thinking of the ‘geographer, the stats-men, and sages’ of my title as three 

distinct spheres, these practitioners did not act in isolation, and their approaches to 

climate study interacted with and influenced each other. 

Finally, I hope this paper will provoke reflection on how all of these approaches 

to post-war climatological study are still relevant for contemporary climate studies and 

connected public debates. Suggesting, that despite contemporary climatology’s reliance 

on modelling, satellites, and computer technology, earlier ways of knowing the climate 

have not disappeared completely, but rather have been subsumed into the tacit knowledge 

base of contemporary approaches. 

 

Knowing Your Climate: Folklore and amateur observers 

 

I am going to begin with some of the folk traditions and amateur observers who are often 

on the fringes of the history of science. Many people during the post-war period, 

especially those in rural occupations in the UK, although usually having no training in 

meteorology, did have a strong understanding of their local climate and prevailing 

weather conditions.
9
 Whether determined by their own direct observations, local 

community knowledge or proxy observations, such as sheep coming down into the valley 

ahead of a snow storm,
10

 such an understanding of one’s immediate environ was 

imperative to a rural community’s success. Inextricably bound up in this local 

understanding of climate was a canon of weather and climate related folklore. Many of 

these traditions and sayings were recorded and popularised by nineteenth-century figures 

such as the Reverend Swainson and Richard Inwards.
11

  

Tensions between popular weather lore and emergent natural philosophical 

understandings of the weather had first been explored by the Quaker meteorologist Luke 

Howard at the end of the eighteenth century.
12

 However, that such folkloric traditions 

were still fashionable in the latter half of the nineteenth century is evident through mining 

                                                           
9
 A. Hall and G. Endfield, “Snow Scenes: Exploring the role of memory and place in commemorating 

extreme winters,” Weather, Climate and Society (Forthcoming). 
10

 Harry Mawson, 1996: Transcript FS, Ambleside Oral History Archive. 
11

 C. Swainson, A Handbook of Weather Folklore (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 

1873); R. Inwards, Weather Lore (London: W. Tweedie, 1869). 
12

 J. Golinski, British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 

2007): Chapter 2; V. Janković, Reading the Skies: A Cultural History of English Weather, 1650-1820 

(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). For more on Luke Howard see Sean Munger’s paper in 

this issue. 



 History of Meteorology 7 (2015) 

 
 

 

74 

engineer and keen folklorist, Inwards’ position as joint editor of the Quarterly Journal of 

the Royal Meteorological Society, a post he held for twenty years.
13

 As the discipline 

further professionalised in the first decades of the twentieth century a clearer gap between 

the scientific approach to understanding the weather and antecedent oral traditions of 

weather lore grew significantly.
14

 

Yet despite this schism, by 1950 Inwards’ Weather Lore first published in 1869 

was in its 4
th

 edition, and to date has never been out of print. Likewise the Reverend 

Swainson’s 1873, A Handbook of Weather Folk-lore was reprinted throughout the 

twentieth century. Both texts, typical of a slew of similar publications in the period, are 

extremely comprehensive and wonderfully poetic in their content.
15

 The proverbs in both 

are regionally specific, with many in the more UK focused Weather Lore being specific 

to single regions, counties or even towns, despite the relatively small landmass of the 

British Isles. Further, in Inward’s Weather Lore not all of the sayings or passages are 

ancient folklore, in between verses from the Bible, excerpts from Shakespeare and 

traditional rhymes, are passages attributed to more recent nineteenth century figures such 

as the Anglican cleric and writer Sydney Smith. Most notable of these contemporary 

contributions are a plethora of rhymes, rules and observations attributed to Admiral 

Robert Fitzroy, an early proponent of weather forecasting and the founder of the UK 

Meteorological Office.
16

  

The local specificity of these collections and the inclusion of contemporary lore in 

Inward’s Weather Lore, highlights that such texts were not archaic tomes kept alive for 

purely linguistic or nostalgic reasons. Rather it suggests that in the first decades of the 

twentieth-century, weather lore was still a functional contemporary practice in Britain. 

However, the varying attribution and age of the sayings in Inwards’, and other similar 

collections, alerts us to the wildly varied accuracy of such traditions. The text of these 

weather proverb collections makes no distinction between accurate rules of thumb or 

prediction, and speculation, hearsay, or poetic verse.  

Despite the continued professionalisation of meteorology, during the first decades 

of the twentieth-century amateur meteorology remained a popular pursuit with the 

growing British middle classes.
17

 Alongside the latest publicly accessible writings on 

meteorology, across Europe amateurs often incorporated local weather lore and folkloric 

traditions into their understanding of the local climate.
18

 By the interwar period and in the 

years following the Second World War, the most proactive amateurs had begun adopting 

techniques from professional meteorology, and were using data of past weather 

conditions to find analogous weather patterns and tentatively forecast the weather.
19

 

                                                           
13

 “Mr. Richard Inwards,” Nature 133 (1934): 603; K. Anderson, Predicting the Weather: Victorians and 

the Science of Meteorology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005): Chapter 2. 
14

 K. C. Harper, Weather by Numbers: the genesis of modern meteorology (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 

2012): 84-90. 
15

 Golinski 2007, 70 
16

 M. Walker, History of the Meteorological Office (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012): 

Chapters 2 and 3. 
17

 Janković 2000; G. Endfield and C. Morris, “Exploring the role of the amateur in the production and 

circulation of meteorological knowledge,” Climatic Change (2012) 69-89. 
18

 S. Strauss, “Weather Wise: Speaking Folklore to Science in Leukerbad,” in S. Strauss and B. Orlove 

(Eds.),  Weather, Climate, Culture (Oxford/New York: Berg, 2003).   
19

 E. G. Bilham, Here is the Weather Forecast (London, Golden Galley Press Ltd, 1947). 



 History of Meteorology 7 (2015) 

 
 

 

75 

A few, such as brothers John and Dennis Bartlett, who used empirical methods to 

make long-range forecasts, had even begun to earn a living from their knowledge of the 

weather.
20

 Although describing themselves as “professional weather consultants” and 

using methods based upon those used by both the British and US militaries, the certainty 

that the Bartlett brothers attached to their long-range forecasts, was at odds with 

academic and national meteorological service meteorologists in the period.
21

 In their 

endeavours the Bartlett’s were following in an age old tradition of weather sages and 

charlatans, albeit under the veneer of a modern, numerical, pseudo-scientific 

methodology.
22

 

The difference between the Bartlett brothers’ approach and that of scientific 

meteorologists in the period is highlighted by comparing their book, Signpost to the 

Weather, published in 1949, with another popular book of the period, Here is the Weather 

Forecast, written by the head of the central forecasting station at the MO, Ernest 

Bilham.
23

 In Bilham’s book there are just five pages towards the end of the text dedicated 

to long-range and seasonal forecasting. He discusses the approaches and describes the 

results from using empirical correlation methods as generally not “commensurate with 

the expenditure of labour.”
24

 Despite the efforts of a new generation of meteorologists 

such as Jerome Namias, who was then Chief of the Extended Forecast Division at the 

U.S. Weather Bureau,
25

 Bilham’s assertion that seasonal, long-range forecasting was not 

yet a viable endeavour, was at the time the accepted position at the British MO. 

Contradicting this position, in Signpost to the Weather the Bartlett brothers began a 

whole chapter dedicated to long-range forecasting, by asking: “Is it possible for the 

amateur to get any idea of the weather several weeks, or even months, in advance? The 

answer to this question is: Yes!”
26

 

It would be easy for practitioners today to consider the Bartlett brothers as quacks, 

but the content of the rest of their book, with a third section solely dedicated to teaching 

people about the British climate, reveals that to do so would miss the wider context in 

which they were writing. Whilst their methods and confidence in their long-range 

predictive ability may have been at odds with academic meteorologists, their dedication 

to encouraging members of the public interested in the weather to learn more about the 

UK climate is very much in keeping with wider trends in the popularisation of science in 

the period.
27

 By the post-war years, the type of amateur observers both the Bartlett 

brothers and Ernest Bilham were trying to encourage through their books, were an 

integral and well-established component of efforts aimed at an improved understanding 

                                                           
20

 The experts say 1: Your weather for the holidays available online at the British Pathé Archive. 
21

 D. Bartlett and K. Bartlett, Signpost to the Weather (London: Edward Stanford Ltd, 1949): iii. 
22

 J. R. Fleming, Fixing the Sky: The checkered history of weather and climate control (New York: 

Columbia University Press): Chapter 3. 
23

 D. Bartlett and K. Bartlett, Signpost to the Weather (London: Edward Stanford Ltd, 1949); Bilham 1947; 

Meteorological Office, Annual Report (London: HMSO, 1947). 
24

 Bilham 1947, 204 
25

 F. Nebeker, Calculating the Weather: Meteorology in the 20th Century (San Diego: Academic Press, 

1995): Chapter 10. Also see Magnus Vollset’s paper in this issue for more on the efforts of Norwegian 

meteorologists at extending forecasts.  
26

 D. Bartlett and K. Bartlett, Signpost to the Weather (London: Edward Stanford Ltd, 1949): 91. 
27

 P. J. Bowler, Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century (Chicago: 

University of Chicago Press, 2009). 

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-experts-say-1-your-weather-for-the-holidays/query/weather


 History of Meteorology 7 (2015) 

 
 

 

76 

of the British climate and the mechanisms controlling it. I now briefly return to 

phenology, the study of times of reoccurring natural phenomena in relation to climate; an 

area where amateur observers were central in efforts to understand the climate more 

thoroughly.  

Since 1875 the Royal Meteorological Society had maintained a volunteer recorder 

network, compiling statistics and publishing an annual report detailing natural annual 

occurrences. After receiving criticism of the reliability of the observations and questions 

over the cost of running the network, the Royal Meteorological Society decided to 

discontinue the phenological report in 1948.
28

 The prominent climatologist, geographer 

and former president of the society (1945-46), Professor Gordon Manley, was critical of 

the decision, commending the co-ordinator of the network, Major Gunton, for his 

“remarkable accomplishment,” adding how he appreciated the effort even more because 

of his background as a geographer.
29

 Manley was a vocal proponent of amateur 

involvement in climatology and later, in 1953, he unsuccessfully campaigned to get the 

phenological network resurrected and taken over by the newly formed Nature 

Conservancy.
30

 

 

Recording the Climate: Data collection and the empirical tradition  

 

In 1939, with the prospect of war on the horizon, the MO had officially incorporated 

research into the everyday remit of their staff, and established a Meteorological Research 

Committee in 1941.
31

 During the war, the MO expanded greatly, and by 1945 the now 

substantial Climatology Division saw itself being called upon for more than just the 

provision of data as had more traditionally been the case. Most notably, during 1942 and 

1943 climatological research informed the creation of a government fuel restriction 

scheme, which split the nation into three based on historical temperature records, 

separating Scotland, England north of a line drawn from the Wash to the River Mersey, 

and the remainder of England and Wales.
32

 

Despite the discontinuation of the phenological network in 1948, during the post-

war years the professional meteorologists of the MO were still heavily reliant on amateur 

observers. By 1947 the climatology branch at the MO was relying on nearly 5,000 

climatological rainfall stations run by private observers on a voluntary basis. The data 

from these amateurs, who showed “great public spirit” in collating their observations, 

informed both climatological research and the development of applied services and 

advice at the MO.
33

 

                                                           
28

 The Royal Meteorological Society (RMets), “Report of the council for the year 1948,” Quarterly Journal 

of the Royal Meteorological Society (1949) 199-214. 
29

 RMets, “Report on the phenological observations in the British Isles for October 1946 to September 

1947,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society (1948) 168-172. 
30

 The National Archives (TNA): FT 3/308 Phenological observations. 
31

 Meteorological Office, Annual Report (London: HMSO, 1939); Air Ministry, The Second World War 

1939-1945: Meteorology (London: Air Ministry, Air Historical Branch, 1954): Chapter 30.   
32

 TNA: BJ 5/119 Ministry of Fuel: supply of meteorological forecasts of temperature; A. Hall, Risk, Blame 

and Expertise: The Meteorological Office and extreme weather in post-war Britain (Manchester: 

University of Manchester doctoral thesis, 2012): 99-103. 
33

 Meteorological Office, Annual Report (London: HMSO, 1947) 



 History of Meteorology 7 (2015) 

 
 

 

77 

In these initial post-war years the number of applied services being supplied by 

the climatological sections of the MO increased greatly. In addition to the provision of 

data for established enquiries such as upper air observations for aircraft manufacturers, by 

the early 1950s the Climatology Division was supplying climatological information to 

businesses and government departments in connection with water supplies, flood 

problems, agricultural and industrial research, health issues and town planning and 

transport.
34

  

In responding to these enquiries, the MO scrutinised their statistics and data for 

analogues, barometric trends, periodicities, symmetry points and general correlations. 

Thus, these methods which had been applied piecemeal across MO branches over the 

previous decades were formally adopted by the newly established department.
35

 Despite 

this growth in both research and climatological applications, we must remember that in 

the immediate post-war years, climatology at the MO was still defined by what it was not. 

The jurisdiction of the newly established climatological branches was described in annual 

reports as, “everything that falls outside the scope of synoptic meteorology and 

forecasting.”
36

 The marginal position of climatology within the MO, reflects the wider 

international history of the field in relation to the rest of meteorology; having long 

struggled to gain widespread respect and authority.
37

 It wasn’t until 1958 with the 

separation of climatological services and climatological research into two distinct 

branches that climatology at the MO found a clear place within the institutional structure 

of the organisation. With this split, climatological research at the MO, led by R.G. 

Veryard, who was also the chair of the World Meteorological Organization’s 

Commission for Climatology, began to focus on upper atmosphere, large-scale and global 

scale phenomena.
38

 This shift in scale of climatological study was influenced by 

developments in dynamical meteorology, the rapid advancements being made in 

electronic computing, and a renewed international interest in geophysical systems, 

influenced by the International Geophysical Year (1957-58).
39

 

The MO weren’t the only people advising the government and industry on 

climatology at the time. There were a small number of British academics spread across 

university geography departments who were also often consulted. For example, in 1949 

guidance on housing and planning in the UK was published, which relied heavily not 

only on MO advice, including research by Ernest Bilham, but also on the views of 

academic climatologists, referencing several works including those by Gordon Manley, 

then professor of geography at Bedford College, London.
40

 The few academic and 

                                                           
34

 Meteorological Office, Annual Report (London: HMSO, 1956); A. Hall, “From the Airfield to the High 

Street: The Met Office’s Role in the Emergence of Commercial Weather Services,” Weather, Climate and 

Society (2015) e-view. 
35

 C. K. M. Douglas, “Reviews of Modern Meteorology 4: The evolution of 20th-century forecasting in the 

British Isles,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society (1952) 1-21. 
36

 Meteorological Office, Annual Report (London: HMSO, 1939); Meteorological Office, Annual Report 

(London: HMSO, 1947) 
37

 Edwards 2010, 63-80. See also Magnus Vollset’s paper in this issue. 
38

 TNA: AIR 2/14909 World Meteorological Organisation Commission for Climatology; Meteorological 

Office, Annual Report (London: HMSO, 1959) 
39

 Fleming 1998, Chapter 9; Edwards 2010, Chapter 5 
40

 TNA: HLG 71/28 Relationship between site development and climatology, 1948-1951. 



 History of Meteorology 7 (2015) 

 
 

 

78 

research climatologists employed in the UK in the post-war years are the last group I now 

turn to. 

 

Understanding the Climate: Geographers and statistical analysis 

 

Climatologists in Britain were few in number, most likely numbering less than ten at any 

point in the years 1945-50. My focus here shall be on the two most prominent British 

climatologists in the period. Firstly, the aforementioned Gordon Manley, who after 

periods lecturing at Durham, Birmingham and Cambridge, became the first professor of 

geography at Bedford College in 1948. He remained there until 1964 when he left to 

found the Environmental Sciences Department at the University of Lancaster.
41

 Secondly, 

Hubert Lamb, who at the time was working in the climatological department at the MO in 

the long-range forecasting research division and would go on to found the Climate 

Research Unit in 1972 at the University of East Anglia.
42

 Although often not primarily 

considered a geographer, Lamb had studied the subject as an undergraduate at Cambridge 

and geographical thinking would remain a central feature of his approach to climatology 

throughout his career.
43

 Both were familiar with consulting and working on applied 

government research. At this time Lamb was an employee at the MO while, from the 

mid-1950s Manley held a MO research grant to investigate London’s meteorological 

records, and during the same period he was involved with ongoing work with the 

Ministry of Fuel and Power on the effect of temperature on fuel.
44

 However, rather than 

focussing on the smaller, applied aspects of their work, I want to highlight some of the 

new climatological approaches and techniques that these two figures developed, which 

are emblematic of the broader methodological developments climatology underwent in 

the post-war years.  

By exploring the analytical methods that Manley and Lamb began to employ in 

the post-war years, we can see that they were important figures who bridged the 

traditional empirical ‘stamp-collecting’ approach of climatologists as the compilers of 

meteorological observations, and the modern global computer modelling of 

climatologists today.
45

 Other British figures that played a bridging role between the 

descriptive climate statistics tradition and the emergent field of climate dynamics include 

MO Assistant Director of the Climatological Division, Charles Brooks and the identifier 

of the link between anthropogenic carbon dioxide production and climate change, Guy 

Stewart Callendar.
46

 However, both Manley and Lamb also had roles as public 

intellectuals, helping to maintain connections between professional climatologists, 

amateur networks and the wider public. Both founded university departments dedicated 

                                                           
41

 G. Endfield et al., “Gordon Valentine Manley and his contribution to the study of climate change: a 

review of his life and work,” WIREs Climate Change (2015): 2 
42

 Walker 2012, 403 
43

 J. Martin-Nielson, “Ways of knowing climate: Hubert H. Lamb and climate research in the UK,” WIREs 

Climate Change (2015): 2. 
44

 TNA: BJ 5/303 Researches into past weather of London: publication by Professor Gordon Manley; 

Gordon Manley Collection: Cambridge University Library, Ms Add 8386/17. 
45

 Edwards 2010, 61-82.  
46

 C. E. P. Brooks, Climate Through the Ages (New York: R. V. Coleman, 1926); J. R. Fleming, The 

Callendar Effect: The Life and Work of Guy Stewart Callendar (1898-1964) (Boston: American 

Meteorological Society, 2007). 



 History of Meteorology 7 (2015) 

 
 

 

79 

to the study of the natural environment in a societal context, Manley wrote a weekly 

column in the Manchester Guardian, regularly featured on both regional and national 

radio, and founded the Royal Meteorological Society’s popular public facing journal 

Weather in 1946,
47

 whilst Lamb contributed 24 articles to this publication, alongside 

numerous letters and features on a wide range of subjects in newspapers such as The 

Times.
48

   

At a time when methodological developments which required ever larger data 

sets, computing resources, and more advanced mathematics were increasingly separating 

professional climatology from amateur and folkloric traditions, through their public 

profiles and work with organisations like the Royal Meteorological Society, both Manley 

and Lamb helped to maintain links across the three groups outlined in this paper. In this 

capacity they acted as important mediators, translating and communicating information 

across the increasingly disparate networks. 

In their research both were strongly influenced by international researchers, 

notably the US based, German pioneer of climatological statistical analysis, Helmut 

Landsberg, and by a host of Scandinavian climatologists and meteorologists, including 

Sweden’s Hans Ahlmann and Denmark’s Leo Lysgaard.
49

 In addition to these 

international figures, Lamb and Manley worked amongst a small network of UK based 

research climatologists. Most were based at the MO, where researchers were now 

beginning to advance earlier models based on geographical variation, using the latest 

mathematical and statistical meteorological methods.
50

 

Throughout his career Manley worked on a vast array of problems, from the 

extent of the last glacial maximum to snow in London. He is most commonly 

remembered, especially by climatologists today, for his meticulous work creating the 

Central England Temperature (CET) series, which he first published in 1953.
51

 The CET 

is the longest continuous record of instrumental surface temperatures in the world, with 

daily measurements going back to 1772 and monthly means going back to 1659. It is 

compiled from a vast array of climatological records that Manley collated and 

standardised over several years, giving an average temperature for a roughly triangular 

area covering the centre of England between Bristol, Lancashire and London. The CET 

series quickly became a central component of climatological study and is indicative of 

wider developments in the field, as study progressed from the local and individual 

compilation of data to larger standardised and applied uses of meteorological 

                                                           
47

 Endfield et al. 2015,  7-8 
48

 For example: H. H. Lamb, “Malta’s Sea Breezes,” Weather 10 (1955) 256-264; H. H. Lamb, "A voice in 

Europe," Times (23 June 1984): 9; H. H. Lamb, “Britain's worsening winters," Times (30 Jan. 1971): 12. 
49

 Manley’s work on snow and glaciation in the British Isles was heavily influenced by Ahlmann’s work on 

glaciation and climate in Scandanavia, e.g. G. Manley, “Snowline in Britain,” Geografiska Annaler, 1939, 

31, 179-193. Whilst Lamb highlighted Landsberg’s interest in his research and encouragement as integral 

to the development of his career, see H. Lamb, “Helmut Erich Landsberg, 1906–1985,” Climatic Change 9 

(1986) 265-266.  
50

 The career of Charles Brooks typifies these developments at the MO; after publishing the widely cited 

Climate Through the Ages in 1926, Brooks went on to champion mathematical arguments to support 

historic climatic variation. See C. E. P. Brooks, 1926 and C. E. P. Brooks and N. Carruthers, Handbook of 

Statistical Methods in Meteorology (London: HMSO, 1953). 
51

 J. A. Steers, “Gordon Manley 1901-80,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 5 (1980) 

513-517. 



 History of Meteorology 7 (2015) 

 
 

 

80 

observations. Updated by Manley in 1974, today the series is maintained by the Hadley 

Centre at the MO and is used to calibrate proxy records of climate change.  

In the early 1950s Lamb was working on many similar issues to Manley. In 1950 

he published a paper introducing the Lamb Weather Type, which when combined with a 

1972 follow-up paper, would go on to become his most cited work.
52

 The system, which 

classified synoptic weather based on variations in surface pressure across the British 

Isles, like Manley’s CET series, can be seen as indicative of the shift that climatological 

research was undergoing in the period. This shift saw the large amounts of data being 

collected not only standardised, but also manipulated, analysed and applied to larger 

climatological questions. Together, Lamb and Manley were important in helping the 

discipline begin seriously considering climate over larger regional and hemispheric 

scales, and in considering climate change over time. Lamb was particularly important in 

bringing to light the possibility that climate may vary and change at the human 

timescale.
53

 

Statistical analysis and manipulation of climatological data, as advocated and 

practiced by Manley and Lamb, continued to increase through the 1950s. In the second 

half of the decade, computerized systems using punched card technology became 

commonplace in the Climatological Department at the MO.
54

 By the end of 1957, the 

World Meteorological Organization, via the Commission for Climatology, was selling 

similar microcards containing meteorological data collected during the International 

Geophysical Year (1957-58).
55

 However, as computing capability continued to increase, 

the empirical climatological tradition was progressively replaced by climatological study 

focused on global climate monitoring and modelling.
56

 Whilst such an approach was 

more physical and theoretical in its nature, it relied as much on statistical approaches, as 

championed by Manley and Lamb, as it did upon Guy Stewart Callendar’s now seminal, 

but then still contested, 1938 paper on the artificial production of carbon dioxide.
57

 

Whilst Manley and Lamb can both be viewed as progenitors of global climate 

studies and climate modelling, we must also be clear on where their views on both the 

utility of numerical methods, and the issue of anthropogenic climate change lay. Whilst 

their post-war work was both in academic and public realms crucial in progressing and 

promoting dynamic climatology, as the practice of climate modelling emerged, both 

Lamb and Manley held reservations about man’s ability to predict climate on any 

meaningful scale. Lamb left the MO in 1970 to set up the Climate Research Unit at the 

University of East Anglia. Leaving in response to what he saw as the overreliance of the 

MO on computers and numerical methods. Manley also eventually became disillusioned 

                                                           
52

 H. H. Lamb, “Types and spells of weather around the year in the British Isles : Annual trends, seasonal 

structure of the year, singularities,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 76 (1950) 393-

429; H. H. Lamb, “British Isles Weather types and a register of daily sequence of circulation patterns, 

1861-1971,” Geophysical Memoir 116 (London: HMSO, 1972); H. H. Lamb, Through All the Changing 

Scenes of Life: A Meteorologist's Tale (East Harling, Norfolk: Taverner Publications, 1997). 
53

 J. A. Kington, “Hubert H. Lamb – a review of his life and work,” Weather 63 (2008) 187-189. 
54

 Meteorological Office, Annual Report (London: HMSO, 1956). 
55

 TNA: AIR 2/14909  
56

 For example see Gilbert Plass’ mid 1950s creation of a computer model of infra-red radiative transfer in 

Fleming 1998, 121-122. 
57

 G. S. Callendar, “The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and its Influence on Temperature,” 

Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 64 (1938) 223-240; Fleming, 2007: Chapter 5. 



 History of Meteorology 7 (2015) 

 
 

 

81 

with the number of studies that were not based on firsthand scientific study, and stuck by 

his climate history methods whilst most around him were adopting environmental 

modelling methodologies.
58

 Although Manley was reticent to be drawn on anthropogenic 

causes of climate change and Lamb’s position on it changed throughout his career,
59

 both 

were pioneers of climatological study that was culturally situated and connected. Both 

understood climate as a boundary issue and believed the future of climatology lay in 

interdisciplinary boundary work. This willingness to work with, amongst others 

geologists, historians, and local expertise such as that held by farmers, has had a lasting 

influence, and can be felt in the inter- and multi- disciplinary approaches of  climate 

studies today.
60

  

 

Conclusion 

 

The ever-increasingly technical and technology-reliant methods being adopted by 

climatology in the post-war years seem at first to be completely divergent from some of 

the earlier traditions introduced in the first half of this paper. However, through small 

glimpses of interactions via organisations such as the Royal Meteorological Society, we 

see how the newly emergent climatological approaches and their professionalised 

proponents remained in touch with amateurs and earlier traditions of climatological 

study. Despite climatological study in the period being heterogeneous and varied in 

approach, the discipline in Britain managed to maintain a connection between the 

amateur and the professional. In this respect, Gordon Manley stands out as a unique 

character, writing his column in the Manchester Guardian at the same time he was 

working on the complicated statistical compilation of the CET series.  

Today, despite scientific consensus on the threat posed by anthropogenic climate 

change, potential solutions have failed to gain widespread public support and 

consequently meaningful political action has been limited. In response to this disconnect 

between scientific knowledge and societal action, academics are increasingly highlighting 

the importance of cultural aspects of climate knowledge. Much of this academic work 

shows the important role particular, specific, and local perspectives of climate can have in 

connecting communities to the often abstract scientific study of anthropogenic climate 

change. In light of such developments, scientists such as Manley and Lamb, who were 

consistently progressive and critical in their approach to climatological study, whilst 

always remaining aware of larger societal debates, should be seen as important figures 

that can help to inform current debates.  

Despite the rise of global-scale climate compilation and modelling, it is not only 

academic climatologists like Manley and Lamb who have a notable legacy; weather 

sayings, lore, and folk traditions still persist and form an integral part of many regional 

                                                           
58

 R. A. S. Ratcliffe, “Meteorologist’s Profile – Hubert H Lamb,” Weather 47 (1992) 263-266; Endfield et 

al. 2015, 10 
59

 In recent years climate sceptics have popularised the idea that Lamb was a prominent early climate 

change denier. However Janet Martin-Nielson (2015) shows that Lamb’s position on anthropogenic climate 

change was much more nuanced, encompassing concerns about the reductive approach of modellers, the 

potential for large errors with predictions, and the lack of integration of climate models with other 

approaches to climate decision-making.  
60

 T. D. Davies, “Guest Editorial – Hubert Lamb,” Weather 53 (1998) 200; Martin-Nielson, (2015); L. 

Veale and G. Endfield, “The Helm Wind of Cross Fell,” Weather 69 (2014), 6-7. 



 History of Meteorology 7 (2015) 

 
 

 

82 

identities in Britain. Further, the rise in popularity of the citizen science movement has 

once again seen amateur networks revitalised and put to work doing real scientific 

research.
61

 In addition to the Woodland Trust’s, Nature’s Calendar Survey, referred to in 

the introduction, the distributed computing project Climateprediction.net is now using the 

idle time of over 30,000 personal computers to run ensemble climate models, alongside 

engaging participants in education on the role of computer models in climate change 

research.
62

 At the MO, applied climatological services continue to be developed under the 

World Meteorological Organization’s “national framework” and are increasingly being 

applied to regional, national, and even international scales.
63

 Finally, while both Manley 

and Lamb’s approach to statistical climatological work may have been superseded, the 

compilation of data series, both from observed, and subsequently proxy records, has only 

continued to increase in importance. Today, the techniques and series developed by 

climatologists in the post-war period, including Lamb’s weather types and Manley’s CET 

series, are foundational elements of climate modelling and climatology more generally.
64

 

                                                           
61

 T. Gura, “Citizen Science: Amateur experts,” Nature 493 (2013) 259-261. 
62

 “Climateprediction.net,” http://www.climateprediction.net/, accessed 16/07/2015. 
63

 See the MO’s Climate Services online at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate-service-uk, accessed 

16/07/2015. 
64

 D. Conway and P. D. Jones, “The use of weather types and air flow indices for GCM downscaling,” 

Journal of Hydrology 212 (1998) 348-361; J. R. Knight et al., “Climate impacts of the Atlantic 

Multidecadal Oscillation,” Geophysical Research Letters 33 (2006) 1-4. 

http://www.climateprediction.net/
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate-service-uk

