Luke Howard - Scientific Work

Scientific Work

Luke Howard has been called "the father of meteorology" because of his comprehensive recordings of weather in the London area from 1801 to 1841 and his writings, which transformed the science of meteorology. Howard had an earlier interest in botany, presenting a paper 'Account of a Microscopical Investigation of several Species of Pollen, ...' that was published in the Linnean Society's Transactions for 1802, but wrote to Goethe that his passion was for meteorology. In his late twenties, he wrote the Essay on the Modification of Clouds, which was published in 1803. He named the three principal categories of clouds – cumulus, stratus, and cirrus, as well as a series of intermediate and compound modifications, such as cirrostratus and stratocumulus, in order to accommodate the transitions occurring between the forms. He identified the importance of clouds in meteorology:

Clouds are subject to certain distinct modifications, produced by the general causes which affect all the variations of the atmosphere; they are commonly as good visible indicators of the operation of these causes, as is the countenance of the state of a person's mind or body.

Howard was not the first to attempt a classification of clouds—Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) had earlier proposed a list of descriptive terms in French—but the success of Howard's system was due to his use of universal Latin, as well as to his emphasis on the mutability of clouds. By applying Linnean principles of natural history classification to phenomena as short-lived as clouds, Howard arrived at an elegant solution to the problem of naming transitional forms in nature.

In addition to his seminal work on clouds, Howard contributed numerous papers on other meteorological topics, although with less success. He was also a pioneer in urban climate studies, publishing The Climate of London in 1818–20, which contained continuous daily observations of wind direction, atmospheric pressure, maximum temperature, and rainfall; it also demolished James Hutton's theory of rain, though without suggesting a definitive alternative.