The Royal Meteorological Society's Quarterly Journal: celebrating 150 years

The Royal Meteorological Society's (RMetS) flagship publication, the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society (QJ), celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2023. This milestone has been celebrated in several ways. A fully open-access special collection1 of 22 classic papers published in QJ highlights key advances in the subject, stretching from 1925 to 2020; these were selected by a group of current and former editors. The special collection is accompanied by a highly informative introduction by QJ's current Chief Editors (Ross and Methven, 2023). In addition, a digital timeline2 highlights these papers, plus many more suggested by the RMetS History Special Interest Group, and places QJ in the context of the Society's wider history. On 13 September 2023, a commemorative meeting ‘RMetS Quarterly Journal: Celebrating 150 Years’ was held at Imperial College3.

John Methven (University of Reading) and Andrew Ross (University of Leeds) presented a precis of the Ross and Methven (2023) article and provided statistics of both the geographical distribution of articles and downloads, buttressing the evidence of QJ's continuing wide international reach and impact.

Tim Woollings (University of Oxford) highlighted the key role of QJ in the development of understanding of Rossby (or planetary) waves, from their initial identification to their heavy influence in understanding the large-scale dynamics of the mid-latitude atmosphere. A paper by Carl-Gustaf Rossby himself in QJ in 1940 introduced the precursor to what is now known as potential vorticity, a key concept in mid-latitude atmospheric dynamics. Earlier work focused on the stationarity of Rossby waves before attention moved on to their propagation, and the importance of this in maintaining the mid-latitude jet stream. Later work in QJ recognised that westerly flows are baroclinically unstable; this played an important role in understanding the development of mid-latitude weather systems, and their impact on the large-scale heat and momentum budgets.

Anthony McNally (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)) spoke on ‘Data assimilation: a fusion of knowledge and the rise of the machines’. This led us through the foundational role of data assimilation in providing the initial conditions for numerical weather prediction (NWP), through its equally foundational role in the development of climate reanalyses (such as ECMWF's ERA5 reanalysis) in modern-day climate science, to its use in improving numerical models. The scale of the problem (fusing data from multiple different sources and the quest for ever higher resolution) was emphasised. Looking to the future, the recent ‘astonishing’ rate of advances in machine learning not only challenges conventional approaches to data assimilation and NWP, but also challenges conventional paths to how such work is presented in learned journals such as QJ.

Brian Golding (Met Office) focused on the quest for accurate NWP rainfall forecasts. He took us on a journey from the pioneering work of Bjerknes and Richardson in the early twentieth century, through successive advances in the Met Office forecasting system (including the 10-level model in the 1960s, the 15km resolution mesoscale model in the 1990s, to the current kilometre-scale (and 70 level) ensemble forecasts). The impressive capabilities of the current data assimilation and forecasting system were demonstrated. The talk finished with a discussion of ‘metrics of success’ of forecasts, not only in terms of the meteorological predictions, but also in their role in early-warning systems that value lives saved, losses avoided and essential services maintained.

Alan Blyth and Steven Böing (both University of Leeds and the National Centre for Atmospheric Science) moved us to smaller scales, discussing the influence of entrainment (i.e. the mixing of in-cloud air with air in the surrounding environment) on the evolution of clouds, and of raindrops in cumulus clouds. Early work had identified the problem of understanding droplet size distribution in the early stages of cloud development and the question of why measured times for producing raindrops were shorter than predicted. Understanding of the role of inhomogeneous mixing, whereby some droplets grew much more quickly than others, developed via a mixture of observations and modelling. The current status of the field, via increasingly sophisticated numerical modelling approaches of how parcels of air mix, was demonstrated and applied to reproducing observations of cloud evolution from detailed case studies.

The talks were broken up by a panel discussion on publishing in meteorology, featuring Andrew Ross (University of Leeds), Alison Brown (RMetS) and Anna Ghelli (RMetS) as panellists and chaired by Fran Morris (University of Oxford). Paul Trevorrow (Wiley) was unable to attend due to illness, but nonetheless contributed some fascinating insights about the nature of publishing in its present form from a publisher's perspective. The panel began with a discussion of what has made QJ so successful over the past 150 years, with Co-Chief Editor Andrew Ross highlighting its widespread appeal to not only national but international authors and audiences. The subsequent conversation flowed through a selection of pertinent topics in the current publishing landscape; for example, the challenges and advantages of open access, the nature of article promotion, improving diversity in publishing and the current state of peer review, with a look forward to how publishing is likely to change in the future. Questions from the audience continued to explore these topics, as well as bringing up further discussion points such as the advantages of working with a major publisher.

Returning to the series of talks, Joanna Haigh (Imperial College, London) discussed QJ's role in the development of understanding of climate science. Even in 1901 (in a paper by Nils Gustaf Ekholm) it was postulated that ‘the present burning of pit coal … if this continues … will undoubtedly cause a very obvious rise’ in surface temperature. The key work in QJ of Guy Stewart Callendar in 1938 stands out as the first to actively attribute observed warming to increasing CO₂ levels. QJ was also home to Gordon Manley's early papers on the Central England Temperature record back to 1659, one of the world's longest temperature records. Many papers in QJ have advanced the understanding of the propagation of solar and infrared radiation through the atmosphere which provides essential underpinning of global model predictions of climate change; as pointed out by many of the day's speakers, descriptions of the development of such global models have always been a key feature of QJ.

In the day's shortest title (‘The Stratosphere’), Mark Baldwin (University of Exeter) took us through from the discovery of the stratosphere in the early twentieth century to today. Alan Brewer's 1949 paper on the circulation of the stratosphere is perhaps the favourite QJ paper of the first author of this Meeting Report; from a few observations of water vapour in the mid-latitude lower stratosphere, Brewer deduced what became known as the Brewer–Dobson circulation; air enters the stratosphere in the tropics and descends in the extratropics. Full explanation of this circulation would follow decades later. Other stratospheric phenomena had a significant gap between discovery and explanation, including the quasi-biennial oscillation (of wind direction in the tropical stratosphere), sudden stratospheric warmings (high-latitude warmings of tens of kelvin within a few days) and the Antarctic Ozone Hole. More recently, there has been growth in understanding of how these phenomena impact surface weather and climate, adding an important dimension to accurate weather forecasting.

Via a focus on three QJ papers, Bablu Sinha (National Oceanography Centre, Southampton), in his talk ‘The Sea, The Sea – a fine tradition of oceanographic research’, emphasised the strong connections between meteorology and physical oceanography. This included the links between papers ostensibly about the atmosphere that would heavily influence physical oceanography. Examples are the relationship between mesoscale eddies and the larger-scale ocean circulation, the role of Rossby waves in understanding Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (a key mode of climate variability) and what may seem surprising to some, the debate about the importance of the Gulf Stream in maintaining western Europe's mild winter climate. In future, enhanced observational monitoring and higher resolution ocean modelling will enable focus on key issues, such as the stability of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.

Thorwald Stein (University of Reading) celebrated the role of remote sensing observations in understanding atmospheric phenomena on all scales and for providing vital inputs to the data assimilation process. A cluster of papers in QJ in 1950 presaged the key role of radar both in monitoring rainfall and in understanding key physical processes in the formation of that precipitation. The advent of satellite imagery in the early 1960s gave an unprecedented view of weather systems, leading to, for example, the identification of cloud patterns that presaged damaging winds in mid-latitude depressions. Via ingenious instrumentation, satellite observations also allowed a much more complete global picture of stratospheric temperatures, including the first observations of the development of sudden stratospheric warmings in the Antarctic. The future promises more novel instrumentation (e.g. direct observations of biochemical processes involved in photosynthesis) and low-cost satellite systems, led by commercial organisations.

Past president Lesley Gray (University of Oxford) led the meeting's Organising Committee, ably assisted by the RMetS staff.