Book 10, Moments in Science Series

Coming May 20, 2025

Elementary Science – Weather and Climate

As a teenager, Wladimir Köppen became interested how the landscape changed as he traveled south from St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea in northern Russia to Crimea on the Black Sea. Explaining that changing landscape became his life’s work. 

In late 1800s, weather and climates were poorly understood. They needed someone to study it carefully over a long period of time. Köppen moved to Hamburg, Germany as head weatherman at the Deutsche Seewarte, the German Marine Observatory on the Baltic Sea. His job was to start one of the world’s first daily weather reports. He helped set up weather stations on the North Sea and train its staff. From around the world, he gathered other weather data.

Slowly, that childhood problem of changing landscapes came into focus as he developed the world’s first climate map. Still today, we use Köppen’s maps, with some slight modifications. Köppen’s maps still help us understand the world’s ecosystems and plan for the future

MOMENTS IN SCIENCE

• BURN: Michael Faraday’s Candle

• CLANG! Ernst Chladni’s Sound Experiments

  • 2019 NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book

• POLLEN: Darwin’s 130 Year Prediction

  • 2019 Junior Library Guild selection

  • starred Kirkus review

  • Eureka Nonfiction Honor (California Reading Association)

  • NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book

• ECLIPSE: How the 1919 Eclipse Proved Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity

• EROSION: How Hugh Bennett Saved America’s Soil and Stopped the Dust Bowl

• 2021 Notable Social Studies Book

• A.I. How Patterns Helped Artificial Intelligence Defeat World Champion Lee Sedol

• FEVER: How Tu Youyou Used Traditional Chinese Medicine to Find a Cure for Malaria

• AQUARIUM: How Jeannette Power Invented Aquariums to Study Marine Life

• MAGNET: How William Gilbert Discovered That Earth Is a Great Magnet

• CLIMATE: How Wladimir Köppen Studied Weather and Drew the First Climate Map