A barometer is a scientific instrument that is used to measure air pressure in a certain environment.

Pressure tendency can forecast short term changes in the weather. Many measurements of air
pressure are used within surface weather analysis to help find surface troughs, pressure
systems and frontal boundaries.
Barometers and pressure altimeters (the most basic and common type of altimeter) are essentially
the same instrument, but used for different purposes. An altimeter is intended to be used at different
levels matching the corresponding atmospheric pressure to the altitude, while a barometer is kept at
the same level and measures subtle pressure changes caused by weather and elements of weather.
The average atmospheric pressure on the earth's surface varies between 940 and 1040 hPa (mbar).
The average atmospheric pressure at sea level is 1013 hPa (mbar).

Etymology
The word barometer is derived from the Ancient Greek βάρος (báros), meaning "weight",
and μέτρον (métron), meaning "measure".

History
Although Evangelista Torricelli is universally credited with inventing the barometer in 1643,[1]
[2]
historical documentation also suggests Gasparo Berti, an Italian mathematician and astronomer,
unintentionally built a water barometer sometime between 1640 and 1643.[1][3] French scientist and
philosopher René Descartes described the design of an experiment to determine atmospheric
pressure as early as 1631, but there is no evidence that he built a working barometer at that time.[1]
On 27 July 1630, Giovanni Battista Baliani wrote a letter to Galileo Galilei explaining an experiment
he had made in which a siphon, led over a hill about 21 m high, failed to work. When the end of the
siphon was opened in a reservoir, the water level in that limb would sink to about 10 m above the
reservoir.[4] Galileo responded with an explanation of the phenomenon: he proposed that it was the
power of a vacuum that held the water up, and at a certain height the amount of water simply
became too much and the force could not hold any more, like a cord that can support only so much
weight.[5][6] This was a restatement of the theory of horror vacui ("nature abhors a vacuum"), which
dates to Aristotle, and which Galileo restated as resistenza del vacuo.
Galileo's ideas reached Rome in December 1638 in his Discorsi. Raffaele Magiotti and Gasparo
Berti were excited by these ideas, and decided to seek a better way to attempt to produce a vacuum
other than with a siphon. Magiotti devised such an experiment, and sometime between 1639 and
1641, Berti (with Magiotti, Athanasius Kircher and Niccolò Zucchi present) carried it out.[6]
Four accounts of Berti's experiment exist, but a simple model of his experiment consisted of filling
with water a long tube that had both ends plugged, then standing the tube in a basin already full of
water. The bottom end of the tube was opened, and water that had been inside of it poured out into
the basin. However, only part of the water in the tube flowed out, and the level of the water inside the
tube stayed at an exact level, which happened to be 10.3 m (34 ft),[7] the same height Baliani and
Galileo had observed that was limited by the siphon. What was most important about this experiment
was that the lowering water had left a space above it in the tube which had no intermediate contact
with air to fill it up. This seemed to suggest the possibility of a vacuum existing in the space above
the water.[6]
Torricelli, a friend and student of Galileo, interpreted the results of the experiments in a novel way.
He proposed that the weight of the atmosphere, not an attracting force of the vacuum, held the water
in the tube. In a letter to Michelangelo Ricci in 1644 concerning the experiments, he wrote:
Many have said that a vacuum does not exist, others that it does exist in spite of the repugnance of
nature and with difficulty; I know of no one who has said that it exists without difficulty and without a
resistance from nature. I argued thus: If there can be found a manifest cause from which the
resistance can be derived which is felt if we try to make a vacuum, it seems to me foolish to try to
attribute to vacuum those operations which follow evidently from some other cause; and so by
making some very easy calculations, I found that the cause assigned by me (that is, the weight of
the atmosphere) ought by itself alone to offer a greater resistance than it does when we try to
produce a vacuum.[8]

It was traditionally thought (especially by the Aristotelians) that the air did not have weight: that is,
that the kilometers of air above the surface did not exert any weight on the bodies below it. Even
Galileo had accepted the weightlessness of air as a simple truth. Torricelli questioned that
assumption, and instead proposed that air had weight and that it was the latter (not the attracting
force of the vacuum) which held (or rather, pushed) up the column of water. He thought that the level
the water stayed at (c. 10.3 m) was reflective of the force of the air's weight pushing on it
(specifically, pushing on the water in the basin and thus limiting how much water can fall from the
tube into it). He viewed the barometer as a balance, an instrument for measurement (as opposed to
merely being an instrument to create a vacuum), and because he was the first to view it this way, he
is traditionally considered the inventor of the barometer (in the sense in which we now use the term).
[6]

Because of rumors circulating in Torricelli's gossipy Italian neighbourhood, which included that he
was engaged in some form of sorcery or witchcraft, Torricelli realized he had to keep his experiment
secret to avoid the risk of being arrested. He needed to use a liquid that was heavier than water, and
from his previous association and suggestions by Galileo, he deduced that by using mercury, a
shorter tube could be used. With mercury, which is about 14 times denser than water, a tube only
80 cm was now needed, not 10.5 m.[9]
In 1646, Blaise Pascal along with Pierre Petit, had repeated and perfected Torricelli's experiment
after hearing about it from Marin Mersenne, who himself had been shown the experiment by
Torricelli toward the end of 1644. Pascal further devised an experiment to test the Aristotelian
proposition that it was vapours from the liquid that filled the space in a barometer. His experiment
compared water with wine, and since the latter was considered more "spiritous", the Aristotelians
expected the wine to stand lower (since more vapours would mean more pushing down on the liquid
column). Pascal performed the experiment publicly, inviting the Aristotelians to predict the outcome
beforehand. The Aristotelians predicted the wine would stand lower. It did not.[6]
However, Pascal went even further to test the mechanical theory. If, as suspected by mechanical
philosophers like Torricelli and Pascal, air had weight, the pressure would be less at higher altitudes.
Therefore, Pascal wrote to his brother-in-law, Florin Perier, who lived near a mountain called the Puy
de Dôme, asking him to perform a crucial experiment. Perier was to take a barometer up the Puy de
Dôme and make measurements along the way of the height of the column of mercury. He was then
to compare it to measurements taken at the foot of the mountain to see if those measurements taken
higher up were in fact smaller. In September 1648, Perier carefully and meticulously carried out the
experiment, and found that Pascal's predictions had been correct. The column of mercury stood
lower as the barometer was carried to a higher altitude