One of his early experiments involved sound waves and the Doppler effect, but he was best known for his contributions to the field of meteorology. He provided many ideas and discoveries, but contributed nothing to meteorological theory. Buys Ballot, however, seemed content with the work that he had done to further the field of meteorology.
The determination of the direction that air flowed within large weather systems is one of the main accomplishments of Buys Ballot. He also founded the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute and acted as its chief director right up until he died. He was one of the first individuals within the meteorological community to see how important cooperation on an international level would be to the field. He worked diligently regarding this issue, and the fruits of his labor are still around today. In 1873, Buys Ballot became the chairman of the International Meteorological Committee, which today is called the World Meteorological Organization.
Buys-Ballot’s Law deals with air currents. It states that a person standing in the Northern Hemisphere with his or her back to the wind will find the lower atmospheric pressure to the left. Rather than try to explain regularities, Buys Ballot spent most of his time simply making sure that they were established. Once they were shown to be established and he had examined them thoroughly, he moved on to something else instead of trying to develop a theory or reason behind why they were so.
