Weather Forecasting

Weather Forecasting

In researching this project I was amazed to find the many books on this topic. After going through much information and reading an enormous amount of writing on weather forecasting I can only come to one conclusion that when all is considered the best forecasters can only give an educated guess of what is in store for weather. Through the many means at their disposal, such as satellites, ships at the ocean, infrared, radio, and radar transmissions even with all of these techniques no prediction is 100% accurate.

One question that I asked myself was "when was the first weather forecasting ever done?", I found out that in 1863 in Britain there was a united forecasting system headed by Captain Robert Fitzroy. Captain Fitzroy would send ships around Britain to warn people of storms and such. However, he was often wrong and criticized and therefor committed suicide. Since then there have been many other services, but the largest one currently is the National Weather

Service. The National Weather Service gives predictions for all of the world through satellite imagery for all countries. Also in recent history many local television and radio stations have made private forecasts for small areas.

Meteorologists are people who interpret the weather, the reason I don't say predict the weather is because even though all forecasters have the same information and data at their fingertips, the way that they interpret what is in front of them can be different. Meteorologists receive information from various sources, but their interpretation of the data determines the accuracy of their prediction. Someone might ask, "If forecasters have so much information on a particular area; how could they predict a flawed forecast ?" The answer to that question lies in the fact that any one of a number of weather conditions may ruin a forecast. A fast cold or hot front moving in, an unexpected flow from the ocean or a cold wind may change the whole days forecast.

There are many different materials and devices used by local and government services to predict the weather. Some of these devices are, Radar which is actually sound waves, which bounce off clouds and give location of storms this way.

Another such device is actually a variation of radar called "Doppler

Radar" actually can give the exact location of a storm within a kilometer.

However, Doppler Radar is not used so much for everyday forecasting, but for tornadoes and very large storms. The way Doppler Radar works is almost the same as regular radar with one advantage, it also can measure the speed of an object or storm, which makes its prime usage tornado watching.