High-pressure area to describe the weather systems generated by highs and lows were introduced in the mid-1800s, mostly by the British. The scientific theories which explain the general phenomena originated about two centuries earlier. The term cyclone was coined by Henry Piddington of the British East India Company to describe the devastating storm of December 1789 in Coringa, India. A cyclone forms around a low-pressure area. Anticyclone, the term for the kind of weather around a high-pressure area, was coined in 1877 by Francis Galton to indicate an area whose winds revolved in the opposite direction of a cyclone. In British English,
Atmospheric pressure lower than air pressure at sea level. Pressure varies smoothly from the Earth's surface to the top of the mesosphere. Although the pressure changes with the weather, NASA has averaged the conditions for all parts of the earth year-round. As altitude increases, atmospheric pressure decreases. One can calculate the atmospheric pressure at a given altitude. Temperature and humidity also affect the atmospheric pressure, and it is necessary to know these to compute an accurate figure. The graph at right was developed for a temperature of 15 °C and a relative humidity of 0%. At low altitudes above sea level, the