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Meteorology

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Meteorology

Meteorology in the Straits Settlements

Meteorological observation in the Straits Settlements and the Malay Peninsula developed from the late eighteenth century as a practical necessity of colonial administration, evolving from scattered thermometrical readings taken aboard East India Company ships into a structured network of recording stations by the 1880s. The scientific study of heat, rainfall, and atmospheric pressure in this region was shaped by local environmental anxieties—particularly the relationship between deforestation and rainfall, the monsoonal circulation governing the tropics, and the periodicity of drought and disease—rather than by the abstract global energy-budget models that dominated European meteorological theory. [1] The resulting body of knowledge, produced by colonial medical officers, civil engineers, botanists, and private observers, constitutes a distinctive hybrid of imported European frameworks and locally observed environmental change, and it remains the primary documentary record of the region’s atmospheric history for the period before the establishment of a dedicated meteorological service. [1]

Institutional Development and Observation Networks

The first British temperature observations in the region were made at Penang in the 1780s, at Malacca in 1809, and at Singapore from 1820 to 1824, using instruments brought on English East India Company ships and repurposed in port. [1] David Brewster subsequently used the Straits Settlements datasets to resolve a dispute between Alexander von Humboldt and Henry Atkinson over the mean temperature of the equator, publishing his findings in the Edinburgh Journal of Science in the late 1820s. [1] The Singapore magnetic observatory, operated by Lieutenant Charles Elliot between 1841 and 1845, produced the first coherent local temperature dataset with hourly readings alongside pressure and weather remarks; it was closed in 1845 due to government funding cuts. [1]

By the 1870s and 1880s, the observation network had expanded considerably. T. Irvine Rowell, Principal Civil Medical Officer of the Straits Settlements, compiled systematic meteorological reports covering atmospheric pressure, temperature of air, solar radiation, grass radiation, humidity, wind direction and velocity, and rainfall across four principal recording stations—Singapore, Penang, Province Wellesley, and Malacca. [2] The total number of rainfall registering stations in the Straits rose to 29 in 1885, an increase of 18 over the previous year, with 18 supplying complete returns and 11 incomplete. [2, p. 388] The network relied heavily on private and semi-official contributors—estate managers, hospital staff, the P&O Company—reflecting the distributed and under-resourced character of colonial scientific administration in the 1880s. [2] New stations were started at the Botanic Gardens, Neidpath, Chasseriau’s Estate, and Bukit Timah in Singapore during 1885 alone, while seven new stations were opened in Malacca in the same year. [2, p. 388]

Rowell’s reports, originally published in the Government Gazette and reprinted in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society with an editorial note affirming their “permanent scientific value,” included annual abstracts and charts showing mean annual pressure, temperature, rainfall, and the number of rainy days at Singapore from 1870 to 1885. [2, pp. 384] The observation protocol specified readings at 9 A.M., 3 P.M., and 9 P.M. for barometric pressure (corrected to 32° F), hygrometer readings (dry and wet bulb), and temperature, with wind direction recorded monthly and velocity registered where anemometers were operational. [2, pp. 384–385]

Rainfall, Monsoons, and the Deforestation Debate

The central meteorological question in the Straits Settlements during the 1880s was whether the clearing of forests in Singapore and Johor was reducing local rainfall. J.J.L. Wheatley addressed this directly in 1881, compiling scattered meteorological records spanning 1820 to 1880 to demonstrate that Singapore’s rainfall was governed by its geographical position and monsoonal circulation rather than by the extent of its forest cover. [3] His primary objective was practical and archival: to consolidate rainfall data that existed in fragmented form across Government Gazettes, Blue Books, and private registers. He identified six distinct sources of information, ranging from a single annual figure for 1835 to the continuous registers maintained at the Criminal Prison (from 1869) and at Mount Pleasant by A. Knight (from 1864). [3]

Wheatley’s data refuted the prevailing local anxiety. The average annual rainfall at the Criminal Prison for 1869–1880 (99.96 inches) actually exceeded the earlier Singapore Observatory average of 1841–1844 (92.697 inches), and Knight’s seventeen-year average (93.94 inches) remained comparable. [3, pp. 33–34] The number of wet days had not declined in any meaningful way, and the extreme years in both directions—drought and excess—were well within the range of natural monsoonal variability. [3] The longest continuous drought recorded was 35 days, from 27 January to 2 February 1864, confirmed by both Vaughan’s and Knight’s registers. [3, pp. 34–35]

Wheatley further rejected Dr. Randell’s proposed artificial division of the year into three equal four-month periods, arguing instead for a natural division based on the North-East and South-West monsoons. His analysis revealed that the first half of the North-East monsoon (November–January) was uniformly wetter than the corresponding period of the South-West monsoon, while the second half (February–April) was drier, and that the total North-East monsoon rainfall exceeded the South-West. He attributed this asymmetry to the North-East monsoon crossing an unbroken expanse of water, whereas the South-West monsoon’s moisture-laden clouds were partially intercepted by Sumatra. [3, p. 49]

A.M. Skinner extended this debate in 1883, dismissing the hypothesis that timber clearance had materially reduced annual rainfall and arguing instead that monsoon position—governed by whether a station lies north or south of the Equator—was the dominant factor in determining excess or deficit in any given year. [4] He supported this with comparative data from 166 Dutch stations across the Eastern Archipelago, which showed that in 1882, stations north of the Equator generally recorded below-average rainfall while those south recorded above-average. [4, pp. 251–252] Skinner conceded, however, that deforestation and urbanisation had measurably raised local temperatures, citing Crawfurd’s 1855 observation that Singapore’s mean temperature had increased by 2.48 degrees since the settlement’s founding. [4] Rowell, writing in 1885, took a more measured position: while he doubted that forest denudation in Singapore had had a very great effect on rainfall given the island’s small size and lack of high hills, he acknowledged that “forest desiccation does influence rainfall materially” in broader contexts, quoting an American article on the drying of the Gulf States as illustrative. [2, p. 389]

Fiona Williamson’s 2022 historical analysis frames this entire debate as a form of proto-urban heat research, arguing that colonial actors in the Straits Settlements were conducting a distinctive hybrid knowledge that combined imported European frameworks—desiccation theory, sunspot cycles, urban temperature differentials—with locally observed environmental change. [1] The extended drought of 1877, now understood to have been influenced by a protracted El Niño event, catalysed the reservation of large areas of virgin and secondary forest across Singapore island during the 1880s. [1]

Solar-Terrestrial Periodicity and Disease Correlation

Skinner’s 1883 article advanced the then-emerging theory of solar-terrestrial periodicity to the Straits context, arguing that rainfall followed an approximately 10½-year cycle synchronised with the sun-spot cycle. [4] He reproduced at length a passage from the 1883 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica summarising the evidence linking sun-spot maxima to increased rainfall, higher river levels, greater cyclone frequency, and elevated temperature in the tropics. [4] Using Wheatley’s earlier tables extended to 1883, Skinner identified the driest years in successive periods as 1866–67 and 1876–77, and the wettest as 1869 and 1879–80. [4, pp. 253–254] From this pattern he concluded that the 1882–83 drought was the expected closing of the solar period that began with the limited rainfall of 1872–73, and he predicted an excess of rain in 1884–85 and a still greater excess in 1885–86. [4]

Rowell independently noted a similar cyclical pattern in his 1885 report, observing that “every few years, varying apparently from 8 to 10, we have a very large annual fall of rain, and a smaller fall, though still above the average, about every five years.” [2, p. 389] The 1885 year itself was a very dry one, with a mean fall of 67.32 inches and 134 rainy days, making it the second-driest on record after 1877. [2, p. 388] A. Knight’s contemporaneous note confirmed the severity of the drought, recording a 20-day period in March with only 0.06 inch of rain and a 16-day period in August with 0.09 inch; he found that 1885 was not surpassed in aridity by 1877, registering rain on 162 days compared with only 125 days at the Kandang Kerbau Observatory in that earlier year. [5]

Skinner also examined the relationship between rainfall and two endemic diseases—cholera and beri-beri. The cholera epidemic of 1882 in Malacca coincided with a total annual rainfall of 66.19 inches, roughly thirty inches below the mean, while during the five months of the epidemic (March–July) rainfall was less than a quarter of the annual total. [4, p. 249] Beri-beri mortality in the Singapore Prison peaked at 106 deaths in 1879, a year of 118 inches of rain, and fell to 22 in 1877, a year of 61 inches, suggesting a correlation with wet rather than dry years. [4, p. 250]

Lightning and Atmospheric Electrical Phenomena

The frequency and violence of thunderstorms in the tropical setting generated a distinct strand of meteorological documentation. G.E.V. Thomas, a civil engineer in the Straits Settlements, published in 1900 a collection of observed lightning phenomena from Singapore and Penang that demonstrated both the frequency of thunderstorms and the inadequacy of contemporary lightning protection systems. [6] His central contribution was the documentation of a previously unnoted after-effect of lightning strikes on trees: the progressive death of surrounding vegetation radiating outward from the struck specimen. Drawing on H.N. Ridley’s diary entry of 3 May 1898, Thomas described a coco-nut plantation at Siglap where eleven trees died in a semicircle around a single struck tree, their foliage appearing burnt and their decline occurring over weeks rather than instantaneously. [6, p. 251] A parallel case on Government Hill (2 May 1899) showed sugar palms within a twelve-to-fifteen-foot radius of a struck specimen completely dead three months later, despite no visible damage at the time of the strike. [6, p. 252]

Thomas also assembled several accounts of globular or ball lightning, a phenomenon then considered dubious by the scientific community. A. Knight’s observations from September and October 1898 described a flame-coloured flash accompanied by a sulphurous smell and a sensation of electric shock, and a greenish-white explosion in the air four to five feet above the ground. [6, p. 253] Thomas explicitly noted that no photograph of the phenomenon had ever been obtained. [6]

The practical engineering consequences of lightning were documented in two lighthouse cases that exposed the failure of single-conductor protection. At Cape Rachado, a side flash left a copper conductor at a bend and punched holes through solid masonry walls. [6, p. 254] At Muka Head (9 October 1897), a flash struck the conductor, tore off a gunmetal brace, then abandoned the heavy copper rod entirely to travel through a thin telephone earth wire, deflagrating thirty feet of it. [6, p. 255] Thomas used these cases to argue that the prevailing assumption—that a sufficiently tall conductor with sharpened points and low earth resistance could protect a building of any size—was demonstrably false. [6]

In 1905, Thomas, by then qualified as an electrical engineer (A.M. Inst. E.E.), published practical notes correcting what he regarded as widespread misapplication of lightning protection principles on government and municipal buildings. [7] His central argument was that the prevailing practice of installing massive copper rods and elaborate multi-branched terminals—rooted in an obsolete “law” linking a conductor’s protective area to its height—was both wasteful and inferior to a network system of light galvanised iron wire with numerous small interconnected points. [7] He recommended galvanised iron cable of seven strands, No. 16 gauge, secured with zinc saddles, and argued that for the same outlay, stranded galvanised wire covered not less than twenty-five times the surface area of a single one-inch copper rod. [7, pp. 218]

C.X. Furtado, a botanist at the Singapore Botanic Gardens, extended the botanical dimension of this literature in 1935, documenting three lightning strikes that occurred near the Gardens between July 1928 and January 1929. [8] His detailed morphological observations of the damage inflicted on Ficus variegata, Fagraea fragrans, and Albizia moluccana led him to propose a three-class typology for the physiological effects of electrical discharges on tree tissues, determined by the physical properties of bark and wood—density, moisture content, presence of milky latex, and thickness of corky layers. [8] He recorded that several trees within fifteen to twenty feet of the struck Fagraea began dying gradually from the top down, while trees at similar distances in other directions were unaffected, suggesting a directional component to the discharge’s residual effects. [8] Furtado further noted Sharples’s finding that lightning-struck rubber trees become susceptible to parasitic attack, and that coconut “budrot” in the Malay Peninsula is nearly always a consequence of lightning damage to the apical meristem. [8]

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on meteorology reveals a progression from descriptive recording to analytical interpretation, and from a single-station focus to a regional network. The earliest contributions—Rowell’s tabular observations for 1879 and the half-year rainfall returns for the Straits Settlements and Native States—established the empirical baseline. [9], [10] Wheatley’s 1881 synthesis marked the first attempt to test a specific hypothesis (the deforestation-rainfall connection) against accumulated data, and his monsoonal framework became the standard reference for subsequent writers. [3] Skinner’s 1883 article introduced the solar-terrestrial periodicity hypothesis and the comparative Dutch data, broadening the analytical scope beyond the Straits to the entire Eastern Archipelago. [4] Rowell’s 1885 report, with its 29-station network and multi-decadal charts, represented the maturation of the institutional observation programme. [2]

The historiographical reassessment by Williamson (2022) has reframed this entire body of work as a history of colonial weather science, demonstrating that the study of heat in the Straits Settlements was essentially “responsive”—shaped by local environmental anxieties around deforestation, urbanisation, and drought rather than by the abstract global energy-budget models that dominated European meteorological theory. [1] She argues that the scientific infrastructure of the colony—observatories, registering stations, medical departments—was oriented toward statistical description and medical correlation rather than the kind of mechanistic or theoretical inquiry that would later define urban heat island research, and that the development was non-linear, scattered, and often triggered by particular atmospheric events or individual researchers’ interests rather than by any coherent programme. [1] The lightning literature, from Thomas’s engineering reports to Furtado’s botanical observations, represents a parallel strand of applied meteorological documentation driven by the practical concerns of colonial infrastructure and plantation agriculture. [6], [8], [7]

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. Fiona Williamson (2022). Heat and Colonial Weather Science in the Straits Settlements, c. 1820–1900 JMBRAS 95(2): 39–55.
  2. T.I. Rowell (1885). Meteorological report for the year 1885 JSBRAS 16: 385–411. Read on JSTOR
  3. J.J.L. Wheatley (1881). Notes on the rainfall of Singapore JSBRAS 7: 31–50.
  4. A.M. Skinner (1883). Straits meteorology JSBRAS 12: 245–255.
  5. A. Knight (1885). Singapore weather in 1885 JSBRAS 16: 435–436. Read on JSTOR
  6. G.E.V. Thomas (1900). Cases of lightning discharge JSBRAS 33: 251–255.
  7. G.E.V. Thomas (1905). Lightning conductors JSBRAS 44: 217–222. Read on JSTOR
  8. C.X. Furtado (1935). Lightning injuries to trees JMBRAS 13(2): 157–162. Read on JSTOR
  9. T.I. Rowell (1879). Meteorological observations taken in Singapore (Lat. 1° 17’ N. Long. 103° 51’ E.), during the year 1879 JSBRAS 4: 63–64. Read on JSTOR
  10. T.I. Rowell (1879). Rainfall registered at the undermentioned stations, in the Straits Settlements and the Native States, during the half-year ending 31st December 1879 JSBRAS 4: 62. Read on JSTOR