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XXV.—On the Diminution of Temperature with Height in the Atmosphere, at different seasons of the year

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2013

James D. Forbes Esq.
Affiliation:
Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh.

Extract

In the year 1830, I succeeded in establishing a Register of the Thermometer at the Bonally Reservoir, which formerly supplied the city water-works, being at a distance of five miles in a direction south-west from Edinburgh. This station is on the northern acclivity of the Pentland Hills, at a height of 1100 feet above the sea. The following year I obtained corresponding observations at the village of Colinton, situated a mile and a half north of the preceding station, and above 700 feet lower. Although this difference of level be not very considerable, yet, as these comparative registers have been kept for nearly five years with pretty uniform results, some confidence is evidently due to the conclusions, even although considerable difficulties opposed themselves to obtaining registers quite free from exception. The interest attaching to them is the greater, that, although registers have been kept at Leadhills and other elevated stations, I do not recollect any strictly comparative observations in Scotland, perhaps not even in Great Britain, at two stations near one another, and differing considerably in level, from which the important meteorological element of the decrement of temperature in the atmosphere could be deduced.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1840

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References

page 489 note * For one year only a spirit thermometer was employed.

page 493 note * See my Report on Meteorology in the first volume of the British Association Reports.

page 493 note † Saussure, Voyages dans les Alpes, tom. iv. § 2050, &c. See also Kaemtz, Lehrbuch, band ii. s. 133.

page 496 note * The vertical lines in the plate correspond to the middle of each month.

page 496 note † The latter part of this paper has been remodelled since it was read.—Dec. 1839.

page 491* note * Added by permission of the Council, April 1840.