JUST now and then, meteorology takes one to strange and quite exotic places. Last week, for example, was spent in Antalya on the southern coast of Turkey at a meeting about satellites. It was a gathering of EUMETSAT, the European Meteorological Satellite Organisation, at which the next generation of geo-stationary and polarorbiting weather-spacecraft, to be launched early in the new millennium, progressed a little further through the planning stages.
To get to Antalya you head south from Istanbul across the vast and barren Anatolian plateau. Rainfall is sparse and infrequent on this mountainous heartland; its harsh winters alternate with blazing summers, and the great expanse of wilderness is broken only here and there by small pockets of cultivation, the villages and farms huddled around isolated springs, or spread along the floors of innumerable ravines.
The Mediterranean southern coast, however, is a different world. It has a warm, sunny climate and brief, mellow winters; cotton fields and large areas of manquis-like scrubby undergrowth alternate with richly fertile zones of pine and eucalyptus trees. The deep Bay of Antalya is surrounded by mountains, and the highest peak, Tahtali, towering to 8,000 ft, provides a magnificent backdrop to the quasi-oriental city.
I was conscious however, of not being the first Irish meteorologist to have visited this Naples of the east. That distinction goes to Francis Beaufort, the sailor from Co Louth, from whom the Beaufort Scale of Wind Force takes its name. In 1811, the 37-year-old Beaufort, then neither Admiral nor "sir"- was in command of the naval frigate Frederickssteen, carrying out a survey of the southern coast of Turkey - a serious chasm in geography at the time. By August of that year he had reached Antalya, and his visit proved to be more eventful than mine.
Beaufort knew from his almanacs that the imminent occulation of a certain star by the moon, combined with a lunar eclipse, would provide a useful fix on longitude to help him in his work. He resolved to make the observations in Antalya, but while setting up his instruments he heard the sound of gunfire, and word came that in the temporary absence of the Pasha of Antalya, the city was being subjected to a coup. Beaufort records the denouement in his journal: "The city was soon recaptured by the Pasha and the unsuccessful party were flying out in all directions. A large body of them came down to the beach abreast of the ship and begged of our watering party to take them abroad and protect them from the fury of their pursuers which it seems was done.