Seventy seven years ago, on this day, July 29th, 1949,
Meanwhile, television (TV) broadcasting had recommenced after the war. On 29 July 1949, weather charts appeared again on TV, the first of them at the end of that evening’s programmes, broadcast from a BBC studio in London. Two captioned charts were displayed, one showing isobars ‘today’, the other the distribution of isobars forecast for ‘tomorrow’. The BBC’s duty announcer, out of vision, read a forecast prepared and supplied by the Office.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 311ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that there’d been a war, so television and weather charts for public consumption were not “a thing” as the young people used to say.
The specific context was the history of the Met Office is crucial in all this (understanding UK understandings and misunderstandings of climate change).
What I think we can learn from this – well, I will confess this is one for the trainspotters, like me.
What happened next – questions about carbon dioxide build-up were there, in the background, through the 1950s and 1960s. They only finally turned from problem to issue in 1988.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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References
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
July 29, 1974 – the World (will be heating) according to GARP