Walker's Methodology
Walker determined that the time scale of a year (used by many studying the atmosphere) was unsuitable because geospatial relationships could be entirely different depending on the season. Thus, Walker broke his temporal analysis into December–February, March–May, June–August, and September–November.
Walker then selected a number of "centers of action", which included areas such as the Indian Peninsula. The centers were in the hearts of regions with either permanent or seasonal high and low pressures. He also added points for regions where rainfall, wind or temperature was an important control.
He examined the relationships of the summer and winter values of pressure and rainfall, first focusing on summer and winter values, and later extending his work to the spring and autumn.
He concludes that variations in temperature are generally governed by variations in pressure and rainfall. It had previously been suggested that sunspots could be the cause of the temperature variations, but Walker argued against this conclusion by showing monthly correlations of sunspots with temperature, winds, cloud cover, and rain that were inconsistent.
Walker made it a point to publish all of his correlation findings, both of relationships found to be important as well as relationships that were found to be unimportant. He did this for the purpose of dissuading researchers from focusing on correlations that did not exist.
Read more about this topic: Walker Circulation
Famous quotes containing the words walker and/or methodology:
“If I could live as a tree, as a river, as the moon, as the sun, as a star, as the earth, as a rock, I would. ...Writing permits me to experience life as any number of strange creations.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)
“One might get the impression that I recommend a new methodology which replaces induction by counterinduction and uses a multiplicity of theories, metaphysical views, fairy tales, instead of the customary pair theory/observation. This impression would certainly be mistaken. My intention is not to replace one set of general rules by another such set: my intention is rather to convince the reader that all methodologies, even the most obvious ones, have their limits.”
—Paul Feyerabend (1924–1994)