The new air world

by Willis L. Moore

Few are aware that the rectangular kite of the weather man was the forerunner of the aëroplane of the aviator. In 1903, while directing wireless experiments in the sending of messages at Roanoke Island, North Carolina, the writer saw the Wright brothers, or their representatives, lying flat upon the lower planes of what appeared to be Weather Bureau kites and gliding in the air from the top of the sand dunes. This was the beginning of real flight by man. The ingenuity of the Wrights transformed the weather man’s kite, strengthened it, took out the ends, hitched on a rudder, and when the petrol engine had developed sufficient power with a given weight, installed it, and flew.

In the future the meteorologist and the aviator will be closely associated. With a sufficient number of weather observations made by aviators simultaneously and well distributed over the United States it will be possible to construct a daily weather map on some high level—say the three-mile level—similar to the map now based upon sea level. The pressure, temperature, wind direction, clouds, and rainfall would be recorded and charted for the upper region clear across the continent. Three miles is about halfway to the top of cyclonic storms and probably in the region of greatest activity. More accurate forecasts would be possible by the study of this additional weather chart. This coöperation of the bird man and the weather man in studying the geography of the new air world will mark an epoch in meteorological science as far-reaching in its consequences as were the discovery of the barometer by Torricelli and the uncovering of the principles of the thermometer by Galileo, the former of which was not known until more than twenty-three years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. Thus swiftly does the mind of man to-day explore the hidden recesses of nature’s mysteries, and with each conquest carry itself to a higher realm of existence.

In the not distant future, more storm warnings may be issued by the Weather Bureau for ships of the air than for those of the sea, for the navigation of the air must play an increasing and important part in the coming activities of the world. Science is becoming so skilled in the harnessing of the forces of nature to man’s desires and in the development of mechanical appliances, that it is reasonable to anticipate the possibility that long-distance travel over land or ocean ultimately will be almost entirely confined to the air.

As the result of the explorations of the atmosphere made by the institution at Mount Weather there was ready for our fighting air men at the front, immediately on our entry into the World War, a fund of useful information concerning a region that but a short time before was entirely uncharted. The instruments carried by the exploring kites and balloons had keen scientific eyes and they recorded on clock-timed cylinders what they saw. Thus did the air pilot know much about the direction and the force of the wind that he would encounter as he rose, the altitude where he would pass above clouds, the degree of cold that he would encounter, etc. He was told that the temperature would fall about one degree for each three hundred feet of his ascent until he reached the top of the storm stratum at six or seven miles, and that if he could reach that altitude he would observe a most wonderful phenomenon: the temperature no longer would fall with gain in altitude; he would enter a cold but an equally heated stratum, without finding any temperatures lower than were encountered upon entering the region, which is always about seventy degrees below zero.

If the aërial explorer could stop his ship and keep it at an altitude of about one and one half miles for twenty-four hours he would be startled to find that the coolest time of the period was during the daytime, not during the night, as he had expected to find it.

In the future the traveler in the upper reaches of the atmosphere will carry oxygen and make the kind of air that he wishes to breathe, and he will properly protect himself against the cold of his new world, which he will find deficient in dust motes and doubtless entirely wanting in the bacteria of putrefaction and of disease. There will be no clouds to obscure his vision; no rain or snow. He will not often ascend above the region where there are not some dust motes to scatter and diffuse a part of the solar rays and give him at least a partial illumination.

Few persons are familiar with the simple problems of the air which have such important bearing on the distribution of man into realms above those he has been accustomed to occupy. They do not know that the northwest wind brings physical energy and mental buoyancy because it has a downward component of motion that draws air from above, where it is free of impurities, and where high electrification has changed a considerable quantity of its oxygen into ozone, in which condition it remains but a short time after reaching the lower potential near the earth’s surface. More people die under the influence of the south wind than under the influence of the north wind, because the south winds hug the surface of the earth and become laden with impurities and are lacking in electrical stimulation. When inventive man becomes more familiar with the ocean on the bottom of which he has heretofore lived, he will not wait for the north wind to bring down to him the beneficial conditions that always exist higher up; he will go after them and remain aloft as long as he desires to do so.

The further development of the dirigible balloon and the aëroplane are among the most important duties that the engineer of the future owes to civilization; and the meteorologist must establish the climatology of the vast untracked regions above the highest mountain peaks, for here man will largely disport himself in the time to come.

The writer agrees with the opinion of Major William R. Blair, formerly of his staff when he was the head of the U. S. Weather Bureau, but since the beginning of the World War the chief meteorological assistant of the Chief Signal Officer of the U. S. Army when he says: