page_title: Timeline of meteorology
section_title: 18th century
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of meteorology / 18th century
caption_attribution_description: English: atmospheric circulation diagram, showing the Hadley cell, the Ferrel cell, the Polar cell, and the various upwelling and subsidence zones between them.
context_page_description: The timeline of meteorology contains events of scientific and technological advancements in the area of atmospheric sciences. The most notable advancements in observational meteorology, weather forecasting, climatology, atmospheric chemistry, and atmospheric physics are listed chronologically. Some historical weather events are included that mark time periods where advancements were made, or even that sparked policy change
context_section_description: 1716 – Edmund Halley suggests that aurorae are caused by "magnetic effluvia" moving along the Earth's magnetic field lines.
  1724 – Gabriel Fahrenheit creates reliable scale for measuring temperature with a mercury-type thermometer.
  1735 – The first ideal explanation of global circulation was the study of the Trade winds by George Hadley.
  1738 – Daniel Bernoulli publishes Hydrodynamics, initiating the kinetic theory of gases.  He gave a poorly detailed equation of state, but also the basic laws for the theory of gases.
  1742 – Anders Celsius, a Swedish astronomer, proposed the Celsius temperature scale which led to the current Celsius scale.
  1743 – Benjamin Franklin is prevented from seeing a lunar eclipse by a hurricane, he decides that cyclones move in a contrary manner to the winds at their periphery.
  1761 – Joseph Black discovers that ice absorbs heat without changing its temperature when melting.
  1772 – Black's student Daniel Rutherford discovers nitrogen, which he calls phlogisticated air, and together they explain the results in terms of the phlogiston theory.
  1774 – Louis Cotte is put in charge of a "medico-meteorological" network of French veterinarians and country doctors to investigate the relationship between plague and weather. The project continued until 1794.
  - Royal Society begins twice daily observations compiled by Samuel Horsley testing for the influence of winds and of the moon on the barometer readings.
  1777 – Antoine Lavoisier discovers oxygen and develops an explanation for combustion.
  1780 – Charles Theodor charters the first international network of meteorological observers known as "Societas Meteorologica Palatina". The project collapses in 1795.
  1780 – James Six invents the Six's thermometer, a thermometer that records minimum and maximum temperatures.  See (Six's thermometer)
  1783 – In Lavoisier's article "Reflexions sur le phlogistique", he deprecates the phlogiston theory and proposes a caloric theory of heat.
  – First hair hygrometer demonstrated. The inventor was Horace-Bénédict de Saussure.
caption: Global circulation as described by Hadley.
exif: {}