Читать книгу Weather For Dummies - John D. Cox - Страница 12

IN THIS CHAPTER

Weathering the forecast

Wising up to the key words

Trying out the tools

Going places with a weather map

Accurately and precisely forecasting weather is a very hard thing to do. In fact, a 100 percent accurate forecast is impossible. (Find “The Butterfly Effect” in this chapter and see why.) Look into the history of almanackers and fortune-tellers of the 19th century, and you will realize that people have wanted reliable weather forecasting long before they could get it. Even early scientists who began to understand the weather thought that forecasting its future was out of the question.

The local forecast may seem easy and breezy, but before it gets to the Internet and the screens of our mobile devices or TVs, a lot of hard science and heavy-duty number-crunching has been going on. My people at the Go Figure Academy of Sciences (GoFAS) tell me that meteorology, the study of the atmosphere, is harder than rocket science. (Check out the sidebar about GoFAS for the real lowdown on this imaginary institution.)

Think of it this way: When it blasts off its launch pad, the first thing scientists want their rockets to do is get out of the atmosphere, to leave behind all the turbulent mess of swirling gases surrounding Earth. (As you may have noticed, a rocket that doesn’t do this is quickly in big trouble!) As soon as it can, it enters the quiet, predictable vacuum of space.

A meteorologist, on the other hand, never gets out of this mess of blowing gases we call the atmosphere. This chaotic environment makes the job of a meteorologist a lot more complicated. A research meteorologist not only has to know everything a rocket scientist knows about the physical laws of motion and mass, about gravity and what-have-you, but also about chemistry and fluid dynamics.

And the mathematics, well — let me put it this way: Meteorologists have bigger computers.

Some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world are devoted to figuring out what the weather is going to be like one day to the next. You wouldn’t believe everything that goes into making a modern, state-of-the-art, accurate weather forecast. But, in this chapter, I’m going to tell you anyway!