Understanding and Misunderstanding the Trade Winds
Authors
Anders O. Persson
Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute
Abstract
In May 1735 a fairly unknown Englishman, George Hadley, published a groundbreaking paper, “On the Cause of the General Trade Winds,” in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. His path to fame was long and it took 100 years to have his ideas accepted by the scientific community. But today there is a “Hadley Crater” on the moon, the convectively overturning in the tropics is called “The Hadley Cell,” and the climatological centre of the UK Meteorological Office “The Hadley Centre.”