Meteorological theory had progressed during his career, but to little practical effect. The sky was considered by many a divine realm, not a place for science. So storms continued to blow over Britain without warning, sinking ships and fishing boats as they passed. In the 1850s, more than 1,000 sailors drowned off the British coast each year.

For the admiral, this was an outrage. By February 1861, he had the authority to act. At his office in Whitehall, he studied weather reports from the coast. If he detected a storm, he would relay a telegram to the relevant port, where a warning signal could be hoisted in the harbor. His first storm warning was sent within hours of Tyndall’s lecture.

Even with the new communications technology, it was, he wrote, a race “to warn our outpost before the gale reaches them.” It was an exhausting undertaking. All the telegraphed slips were read, collated and analyzed. Everything was time-sensitive.

Often, the warnings turned out to be right, saving lives. FitzRoy became a national celebrity, called the “Clerk of the Weather” in the newspapers. Within six months, his storm warning project had evolved into full-blown weather predictions issued under a new term of his own: forecasts.

Despite huge popular appeal, they remained highly controversial. Religious men doubted whether anyone could pretend to know the mind of God, while scientists attacked the admiral’s lack of theory and penny-pinching members of Parliament complained about the cost of telegraphy. He struggled with the diplomatic challenge of securing data from rival powers like France, and with the inevitable, sometimes costly failures of his weather forecasting.

The burden became too much. Depressed and ailing, on April 30, 1865, he locked himself in his dressing room and cut his throat with a razor.

Today’s climate change debate has evolved much like the forecasting controversy of the 1860s. Similar questions arise: How can we trust scientists to warn of coming danger? What economic costs should we expect?