Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, Science had a review by Sara Boon, a freelance writer from Vancouver Island, of Simon Winchester’s latest book, The Breath of the Gods, Here is the complete review.

“In September 2024, when Winchester toured the local weather station on an eerily calm day, a story about the fate of the world’s winds began to foment. “The underlying reason for my writing this book is the notion, still unformed and so to some a subject of considerable controversy, that wind speeds around the world are falling,” he writes. Scientists call this phenomenon “global terrestrial stilling” and have observed its occurrence from the 1980s to 2010. Ocean-atmosphere factors underlie the shift, which has now moved back into a stronger wind phase (¹).

Winchester begins by noting that wind is different from other meteorological phenomena in that it can only be observed by its action on other things, not in and of itself. This elusiveness is the reason winds were historically named for gods. It was not until Aristotle observed the interaction between high-and low-pressure systems that we began to understand the underlying factors that cause wind and influence its strength and directionality.

The book describes in extensive detail the major wind patterns around the globe and the scientists they are named for: from the Hadley cell, named after the English physicist and meteorologist George Hadley, which describes a circulation pattern in the tropics where warm, moist air rises, travels to the poles, cools, descends in the subtropics, and then returns to the equator; to the Ferrel cell, a mid-latitude atmospheric circulation pattern named after the American meteorologist William Ferrel. There are two jet streams in each hemisphere, readers learn—polar and subtropical—which form between two air masses with different temperatures. Finally, there are “Rossby waves,” which form across the globe and affect the movement of the jet stream. All of these systems are altered by the Coriolis effect and stem not only from ocean conditions but also from the interaction of ocean and land—just as Aristotle observed.

Wind speed was first classified in 1805 with Irish hydrographer Francis Beaufort’s scale, which ranges from 0 (calm) to 12 (hurricane) and is a largely image-based system. We use wind speed to characterize typhoons and hurricanes using the Saffir-Simpson scale, which ranges from Category 1 (caution) to Category 5 (catastrophic). And we use the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale to classify tornadoes on the basis of their destructive capacity, most of which is due to wind, with values ranging from EF0 (weakest) to EF5 (strongest). The intensity of hurricanes and typhoons has increased in the past decade owing to increased wind speeds, readers learn, and there has also been an increase in the frequency and intensity of tornadoes, which Winchester defines as “uniquely American,” although they happen regularly in Canada too.

The book focuses largely on the Age of Sail, as wind was used during this era to ferry slaves and goods and to fight wars. Winchester is at his best here, writing an engaging fictional narrative of a sailor traveling around Cape Horn—the most difficult waters to sail. He brings the story alive, although it falters a bit with some dated language (for example, a reference to “pretty dark Chilean women with flowered frocks and high heels”). Later, he tells the harrowing story of a 1968 ferry disaster in New Zealand that killed 53 people when the vessel was caught in tropical cyclone Giselle. And no wind story would be complete without the Wright brothers and how they used kite technology to inform their biplane design.

In war, wind has been both a hindrance and a help. Winchester writes how, in 1588, the British were expecting a war with Spain, but when the Spanish ships arrived, they met with unfavorable winds, and the anticipated battle never materialized. Meanwhile, during World War II, the Allied nations had their own forecaster, American oceanographer Walter Munk, dubbed the “Einstein of the Oceans,” who calculated the best weather—and wind—conditions for D-Day.

Long past the Age of Sail, wind has remained an important factor in human civilization. It carries particulates long distances: wildfire smoke, volcanic ash, dust, seeds, pollen, bacteria, and even radioactive fallout. One of the most dramatic examples of wind carrying particulates occurred during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Winchester does not mention the winds that blew dust from the Great Plains into Washington, DC, in March 1935—ironically, during a congressional hearing on soil conservation— although he does talk about the impacts of dust on people and livestock. Wind can be put to work, and it has long powered windmills for pumping groundwater and grinding flour and wind turbines for generating electricity. Container ship companies are even starting to add computer-controlled sails to their vessels in the hopes of burning fewer fossil fuels during ocean transits.

The book ends rather abruptly, with Winchester noting that global terrestrial stilling is not discussed much anymore. Definitive answers about the phenomenon are well documented, and winds continue to increase. “Of all the components of…atmospheric shifting, wind is the undisputed prime,” he writes. “A world without wind is just too dreadful to contemplate.”

Sounds interesting.  Wind anyone!

Tony

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