
Modern meteorology was born 60 years ago - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/modern-meterology-was-born-60-years-ago-today/
======
renewiltord
The introductory chapters of James Gleick's _Chaos_ are about meteorology.
When I read it I was blown away by the fact that these mathematical systems
had sensitive dependence on initial conditions to such a degree that there was
fractal complexity.

Very cool! I had this belief that if I get another decimal point in in the
observations I would get closer to the truth, but if 1.25 and 1.2 could yield
diametrically opposing results that doesn't work. Threw me for a loop,
honestly.

~~~
timthorn
As Fry Richardson wrote:

"Big whorls have little whorls/ Which feed on their velocity,/ And little
whorls have lesser whorls/ And so on to viscosity."

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timthorn
Lewis Fry Richardson was the person who first attempted numerical modelling of
the weather. He spent his free time on the front line of WWI as an ambulance
driver trying to complete a single 6 hour forecast. Unfortunately his source
data was noisy and ruined the result, but it was his efforts that enabled
computer generated weather forecasts - he wasn't a bit player.

~~~
hyperpallium
I believe the problem was his numerical method was unstable, and blew up.

Somewhere in this talk by Philip Roe
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=uaH91P665PI](https://youtube.com/watch?v=uaH91P665PI)

~~~
timthorn
I understand that his method was rerun by the Met Office and when they
excluded the bad source data they got the correct answer.

[https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/who/our-
history/celebr...](https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/who/our-
history/celebrating-100-years-of-scientific-forecasting)

~~~
hyperpallium

      limitations with the data
      method was eventually... proved correct
    

Does sound like they're blaming the data; though his "method" could well refer
to his general method, not to every exact detail.

Philip Roe is himself a famous pioneer in CFD, so I lean towards trusting his
version more... he said the forecast was of extraordinary 100mph winds, pretty
specific. The bad data would have to be wildly bad to yield that! OTOH it
inevitably happens with instability.

However, I really don't know. Maybe it's become a folktale, to illustrate
instability, since it's a big deal in CFD!

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qwertox
I can't remember exactly which episode of the "Omega Tau" podcast it was, very
likely "Weather Forecasting at the ECMWF", but in it it was stated that we're
adding one day of reliable forecasting for every decade of research on the
topic.

[https://omegataupodcast.net/326-weather-forecasting-at-
the-e...](https://omegataupodcast.net/326-weather-forecasting-at-the-ecmwf/)

------
redis_mlc
I'm skeptical about the claims that Tiros-1 was useful, compared to ground
station and radiosonde data for forecasting.

It would be useful for hurricane tracking, though.

Source: worked on Crays for a national weather lab.

