Meteorology

METEOROLOGY (from the Greek meteorologia - the study of celestial phenomena), a branch of geophysics whose main task is to uncover the connection and relationship between phenomena occurring in the atmosphere (atmospheric physics). Meteorology differs from physics only in its method: physics is based predominantly on experiment, whereas meteorology is based on observation. All those changes that are observed in different parts of the globe and at different times (changes in atmospheric pressure, temperature, and humidity of the air, strength and direction of winds, and others) and which in one combination or another are commonly called a certain weather, represent various transformations of a single solar energy accumulated in the atmosphere earlier or continuing to flow into the atmosphere at the time of observation. Since weather presents a very complex picture, for the convenience of study it is broken down into separate, aforementioned constituent parts called meteorological elements. These elements are those quantities by which the physical state of the atmosphere can be determined in a given place and at a given time. Meteorological observations are carried out at special meteorological stations with the help of special instruments, according to which readings are taken 3 times a day (in the USSR at 7 o'clock in the morning, at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, and at 9 o'clock in the evening), and at 1st-category stations - with the help of self-recorders operating continuously. In connection with solar radiation as the main cause of all atmospheric changes, the periodicity of meteorological elements has been established - daily, annual, and every 11 years, in connection with sunspots. The data of meteorological stations are processed by the Central Geophysical Observatory in various directions depending on the practical tasks in mind; the 1st processing method, the method of mean values, gives the right to draw a general conclusion over a multi-year observation period about the character of the climate of a certain locality, i.e., the totality of weather types observed in it; the 2nd method, the synoptic method, is based on the summary and study of the state of meteorological elements at the same time in various, as far as possible numerous places. The comparison of these data on a map makes it possible to accurately establish the dynamics of processes occurring in the atmosphere, and in particular to determine the direction of barometric highs and lows and thus predict the probable weather for the nearest period of time. In this recently developing branch of meteorology, there are already known achievements that are used in navigation, aviation, and agriculture.

A. Lozinsky. Meteorological factors in pathology and medicine are of significant interest both in theoretical (etiological, pathogenetic) and in practical (therapeutic) terms. Depending on the duration of the action of meteorological factors, one should distinguish: 1) the significance of the so-called weather as a complex of meteorological elements rapidly changing in time (temperature, humidity, air currents, barometric pressure, sunlight, etc.); 2) the significance of the time of year, or the so-called season (spring, autumn, winter, summer) as a totality of meteorological factors acting over a significant period of time, and 3) the significance of climatic factors, inasmuch as the concept of climate includes a known group of atmospheric phenomena. It has been established that certain diseases or symptoms do indeed often arise or accumulate in certain weather (meteorotropism of pathological factors). Thus, an accumulation of cases of acute laryngeal croup (and laryngospasm) is noted with a rapid change in air currents (Stenosenwetter of German authors); the significance of weather factors comes to the fore in spasmophilia of infants, attacks of epilepsy, eclampsia, in joint and scar pains, in changes in mental states (drop in atmospheric pressure and a feeling of depression), in certain infections (for example, influenza), and the like. There are indications of blood pressure fluctuations with a change in wind direction (e.g., observations on southern winds in Switzerland). The connection between the state of hematopoiesis and mountain culture is well known. The significance of the time of year is spoken of chiefly by phenomena from the field of pathology and epidemiology of infectious diseases: e.g., the accumulation of rheumatism, lobar pneumonia in damp and cold weather, the development of dysentery epidemics in the summer-autumn period, the so-called children's diarrhea in the summer heat, and the like. Among non-infectious diseases, rickets is of special interest in the same regard as predominantly a disease of the winter season. The connection between pathological and meteorological factors under the conditions of one or another climate has been established. This is indicated by the very existence of the category of "tropical" diseases. Climatic fluctuations also affect the fluctuations of certain diseases in the sense of their special severity and mortality in certain periods (e.g., diphtheria). The seasonality of pathological phenomena can be related to a certain extent to the seasonality of a number of biological, respectively physiological, states corresponding to a given time of year. It is undoubtedly true, for example, that animals with seasonal dimorphism must react differently to certain harmful factors, including atmospheric impacts, in connection with the features of the setup of their entire hormonal apparatus of a seasonal order. The action of climatic factors can apparently explain the existence in the norm of three-month intervals between menstruations in women of polar countries, the different timing of the onset of puberty in inhabitants of polar and southern countries, and the like. The very mechanism of action on the organism of various meteorological elements, whether such action is short-term or prolonged, is still unclear in many respects. One can consider it firmly established that of greatest importance is not this or that meteorological element separately, but their totality, and not the statics of these elements, but the amplitude of their fluctuations, i.e., the corresponding meteorological processes, their dynamics. In other words, the question of the effect of weather on the organism should be posed not in the sense of philistine "damp", "cold", "warm", "windy", not in the sense of the action of particular meteorological factors (barometric pressure, temperature, humidity), but complexly in the sense of accounting and synthetic analysis of all meteorological elements that can be taken into account for a given period of time, keeping in mind not only the time of the appearance of the corresponding disease, but also the time preceding it and the time following it. It has also turned out that the clinical effect can occur somewhat earlier than the change in meteorological factors registered by us with the help of appropriate equipment. It is also essentially important that the analysis of particular symptoms discovered in the clinic should not lag behind the analysis of phenomena in the entire organism, since particular manifestations of meteorological impact often also have general prerequisites for their occurrence. As for the significance of the seasons and climatic factors, alongside properly meteorological moments, some additional factors should also be taken into account here. Thus, if we assume that the accumulation of rickets cases in the winter time occurs chiefly because in winter ultraviolet rays are almost absent on the earth's surface, being retained in the higher layers of the atmosphere, if we speak of the seasonal accumulation of cases of measles and other infectious diseases, if we assume the action of cold on the decrease of immunity, then behind all this one must not forget about parallel changes in the conditions of daily life and nutrition of the population in the same season (crowding of children, for example, is observed in winter in general more often, the role of fruits, vegetables, raw water in the summer time, etc.). The significance of side factors is especially important to keep in mind when analyzing the impact of climatic factors, since climate includes not only the group of properly atmospheric phenomena, but also those created by man himself (forests, soil condition, industry, population customs, nutrition, etc.). Therefore, the action of climatic factors is immeasurably harder to account for than the action of only meteorological elements under the conditions of so-called weather and season. Finally, the same meteorological factors exert an undoubted influence on microorganisms, changes in their virulence in one direction or another. The difficulty of detailed analysis of meteorological factors is also caused by the fact that the total sum of these factors is in the closest dependence on the so-called cosmic influences, i.e., factors lying outside the terrestrial atmosphere, and above all on the main source of energy - the sun. The study of these cosmic influences on the organic life of the earth, whether this influence is direct (e.g., the hypothetical action of Faur's $eta$-rays, the action of lunar, polar light, earthquakes, etc.) or indirect, through the mediation of meteorological factors, has not yielded great results up to the present time. In particular, the questions of the connection between sunspots and periodic climate fluctuations, the question of short and long waves of these fluctuations (30 years and 200 years according to Brückner), of their connection with mortality, morbidity, the appearance of new disease forms (the phenomenon of the so-called pathomorphosis), the severity of individual diseases (e.g., diphtheria epidemics), all these questions of cosmic, meteorological, and climatic rhythm have only been posed, and it is a matter for the future to clarify the significance of these factors.

I. Davydovsky. Recently, attempts have been made to establish the combination of the three most important climatic elements most favorable for man: air temperature, its humidity, and wind force. Such a combination is called the comfort zone (see) and is determined using a special instrument, the katathermometer (see Katathermometry). Meteorology is of interest to physicians when applying climate for therapeutic purposes, in climatotherapy (see). To judge the therapeutic significance of the climate of a given locality, we must use long-term average meteorological observation data. At the same time, it must, of course, be noted that these data, precisely because they are averages, far from always give an accurate idea of the climate of a given locality in a given period of the year. Therefore, for climatic localities, it is especially important to establish the presence of constancy of meteorological elements. The smaller the fluctuations of these elements, the more even the climate and the more suitable it is for the organization of climatic health resorts. In general, it should be said that along with the two mentioned methods of processing meteorological data—the method of average values and the synoptic method—for purely medical purposes, a 3rd method would be most suitable: the study of weather fluctuations from one day to the next. The assessment of the climate of various localities precisely from the standpoint of the constancy of meteorological elements from day to day would best establish a climate that could exert both a preventive influence in terms of preventing the development of diseases and a therapeutic influence in cases where we use climatotherapy to eliminate the consequences remaining after past illnesses.

A. Lozinsky. The meteorological factor in production is composed of various combinations of temperature, humidity, and air movement, as well as radiant energy. Among occupational hazards, the meteorological factor plays an extremely important role, since in a very large number of industries the existing meteorological conditions do not meet the requirements of "comfort" (i.e., a state of the organism in which there is no disruption of thermoregulation), and the temperature in workplaces can be excessively high or excessively low. The latter occurs in a relatively limited number of professions: those working in refrigerators, in the fermentation departments of breweries, in elevators, in warehouses, in storehouses, and those working in the cold season in the open air (a number of railway transport professions, logging operations, etc.). Conversely, high air temperature is of much greater importance, to the effect of which a very large number of workers are exposed. The elevated air temperatures encountered in industry have a very wide range, starting from relatively small increases above the "norm"—23–24° (seamstress-dressmakers, candy wrappers, carding and scutching departments of textile factories) up to 30–35° (speed frame and spinning frame shops of spinning mills, weaving mills), 40–60° (hot shops in metallurgy and the metalworking industry), and 100–120° (discharging of furnaces in the porcelain and earthenware industry). Often, high air temperature is combined (for example, in hot shops, glassworks, etc.) with an uneven distribution of temperature in time and space (horizontally and vertically) and with the presence of the effects of radiant energy; further, in a number of industries (laundries, spinning, weaving, dyehouses, etc.), high temperature is combined with increased humidity; the latter can also occur under normal temperature conditions (for example, bleaching departments) or reduced temperature conditions (washing departments of breweries and fruit water plants); excessive air movement is observed relatively rarely (in certain underground work locations, during work in the open air); for the most part, in production conditions, insufficient movement or complete stagnation of air is observed. Radiant energy is usually found in combination with high air temperature, which in hot shops is expressed particularly sharply in the warm season (see Radiant energy, Hot shops). Regarding the impact of individual components and various combinations of meteorological factors on the organism of workers in various industries, see the relevant entries (Hot shops, Radiant energy, Dyeing, Laundry, Spinning industry, Weavers, etc.). Research conducted in recent years abroad (the work of Hill and his disciples in England, Yaglou and his school in the USA) and especially in the USSR (the Central and Leningrad Institutes of Occupational Health, the Obukh Institute, the Kharkov Institute of Occupational Pathology and Hygiene, and many others) has made it possible to establish with greater precision the changes occurring in the organism as a result of prolonged exposure to high temperature on workers of various professions (cardiovascular changes, disorders of the gastrointestinal tract, disturbances of water-salt metabolism, etc.) and to study the influence of various corrective and health-improving measures. The establishment of "comfort zones" and "comfort indices" was pursued particularly intensively in England (Hill and his collaborators) and the USA (Yaglou et al.), as well as in the USSR. In practice, people are still often limited to a rough subdivision of labor into three groups: light, medium, and heavy, for which (roughly empirically and schematically) comfort zones have been established: 1) 7–20°, 2) 15–17°, 3) 12–14°—all at average relative humidity. Methods for investigating meteorological conditions in production. Since in most cases these conditions are variable both in time and in space, it is necessary to carry out measurements continuously and repeatedly—at a number of points horizontally and vertically, in different seasons, at different hours of the day (at the beginning, middle, and end of the working day), etc. The equipment used for these measurements must be portable and provide sufficient accuracy of readings with little expenditure of time per measurement. To determine air temperature, an ordinary mercury thermometer with a scale up to 50 degrees and above is used; if it is necessary to record temperature fluctuations over a certain period of time, a thermograph (Rochas or other) is used. To measure air temperature under conditions of thermal radiation, the "paired thermometers" instrument has recently been introduced into practice; this instrument consists of two thermometers, wherein the reservoir of one is silvered or gilded. Due to the different values of the absorption coefficient (glass and silver), the thermometers give unequal readings: the true air temperature is determined by the formula t = t₁ - k(t₂ - t₁), where t is the desired air temperature, t₁ is the temperature of the silvered thermometer, t₂ is the temperature of the unsilvered one, and k is a coefficient depending on the physical and geometrical properties of the reservoirs and the state of the environment. Usually, in industrial conditions, air temperature is measured simultaneously with its relative humidity, for which psychrometers are mainly used; since August's psychrometer has a number of disadvantages (duration of exposure, lack of protection from the action of thermal radiation, inconstancy of the constant at different air movement speeds), Assmann's psychrometer is most often used, with the small model being especially convenient for use. To record humidity fluctuations over a long period of time, self-recording instruments—hygrographs and psychrographs—are used. When it is necessary to determine the water content in air saturated with moisture (fogs in dyehouses, air in ventilation ducts), the absolute humidity is determined, for which air is drawn through apparatus in which moisture is retained by an absorber (calcium chloride, pieces of pumice impregnated with sulfuric acid, etc.). Air movement speeds—if they reach values of 1 m/s and more—are determined using anemometers of various systems (in ventilation pipes—Pitot, Prandtl tubes, etc., with a draft gauge); at low speeds, a katathermometer is most often used. Recently, the electroanemometer has begun to be introduced into practice, working with which is much simpler and faster; the principle of the instrument is the cooling of a heated wire, the intensity of cooling of which at a given temperature proceeds depending on air movement; the latter is calculated from the reading of a galvanometer. To determine small air movement speeds under conditions of thermal radiation, it has been proposed to use a "paired katathermometer" (similar to the paired thermometer). For the determination of radiation intensity, see Radiant energy and Actinometry. Prophylaxis. In combating the effects of high temperature on workers, technical measures come to the fore: 1) mechanization of heavy work performed under conditions of high temperature (mechanical casting, forging, glass production, etc.), 2) the most complete possible enclosure of apparatus by chambers, hoods, casings, etc., constructed from poorly heat-conducting materials (see Hot shops, Radiant energy); the same applies to apparatus from which many water vapors escape (see Dyeing). Where these measures cannot be implemented or where they give an insufficient effect, it is necessary by means of supply and exhaust ventilation to create the maximum possible air exchanges in order to reduce its temperature, and in many cases (when workers stay for a long time at a certain place) local blowing gives a very good effect (blacksmiths in mechanized forges, knock-out workers in conveyor casting, glassblowers working near drying apparatus, etc.). The organization of the labor regime is of great importance—the introduction of organized breaks during which workers are given the opportunity to rest in appropriate conditions (at a low air temperature, in a lying position with raised legs; the use of water procedures during these breaks—especially in the summer time—is very advisable: wipe-downs, showers, etc.). To prevent the disruption of water-salt metabolism, the supply of high-temperature shop workers with high-quality chilled water, carbonated and with the addition of 0.5% table salt, must be ensured. Further: proper special clothing; washbasins, showers, baths, etc.; rational occupational selection.