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, 10 December 1887 ]]
Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the state of the Atmosphere for a future time and a given location.

Human beings have attempted to predict the weather since time immemorial. Today, weather forecasts are made by collecting quantitative Data about the current state of the atmosphere and using Scientific Understanding Of Atmospheric Processes to project how the atmosphere will evolve. The Chaotic nature of the atmosphere, the massive computational power required to solve the equations that describe the atmosphere, and incomplete understanding of atmospheric processes mean that forecasts become less accurate as the difference in time between the present moment and the time for which the forcast is being made (the ''range'' of the forecast) increases.


HISTORY OF WEATHER FORECASTING

See Also: Weather lore


For millennia people have tried to forecast the weather. In 650 BC, the Babylonians predicted the weather from cloud patterns. In about 340 BC, Aristotle described weather patterns in Meteorologica . Chinese weather prediction lore extends at least as far back as 300 BC.

Ancient weather forecasting methods usually relied on observed patterns of events. For example, it might be observed that if the sunset was particularly red, the following day often brought fair weather. This experience accumulated over the generations to produce .

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  quote Imagine a rotating sphere that is 12,800 kilometers (8000 miles) in diameter, has a bumpy surface, is surrounded by a 40-kilometer-deep mixture of different gases whose concentrations vary both spatially and over time, and is heated, along with its surrounding gases, by a nuclear reactor 150 million kilometers (93 million miles) away Imagine also that this sphere is revolving around the nuclear reactor and that some locations are heated more during one part of the revolution and other locations are heated during another part of the revolution And imagine that this mixture of gases continually receives inputs from the surface below, generally calmly but sometimes through violent and highly localized injections Then, imagine that after watching the gaseous mixture, you are expected to predict its state at one location on the sphere one, two, or more days into the future This is essentially the task encountered day by day by a weather forecaster
  source On the difficulty of weather forecasting, Bob Ryan , Bulletin Of The American Meteorological Society , 1982


  The Forecasting Of The Weather In The 0-12 Hour Timeframe Is Often Referred To As '''nowcasting''' It Is In This Range That The Human Forecaster Still Has An Advantage Over Computer NWP Models In This Time Range It Is Possible To Forecast Smaller Features Such As Individual Shower Clouds With Reasonable Accuracy, However These Are Often Too Small To Be Resolved By A Computer Model A Human Given The Latest Radar, Satellite And Observational Data Will Be Able To Make A Better Analysis Of The Small Scale Features Present And So Will Be Able To Make A More Accurate Forecast For The Following Few HoursE-notescom "http://scienceenotescom/science-fact-finder/weather-climate/what-nowcasting" class="copylinks" target="_blank">Weather and Climate What Is Nowcasting Retrieved on 2007-02-16