Weather forecasting

Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the state of the atmosphere for a given location. Human beings have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia, and formally since the nineteenth century. Weather forecasts are made by collecting quantitative data about the current state of the atmosphere at a given place and using scientific understanding of atmospheric processes to project how the atmosphere will change.

Once an all-human endeavor based mainly upon changes in barometric pressure, current weather conditions, and sky condition, weather forecasting now relies on computer-based models that take many atmospheric factors into account. Human input is still required to pick the best possible forecast model to base the forecast upon, which involves pattern recognition skills, teleconnections, knowledge of model performance, and knowledge of model biases. The chaotic nature of the atmosphere, the massive computational power required to solve the equations that describe the atmosphere, error involved in measuring the initial conditions, and an incomplete understanding of atmospheric processes mean that forecasts become less accurate as the difference in current time and the time for which the forecast is being made (the range of the forecast) increases. The use of ensembles and model consensus help narrow the error and pick the most likely outcome.

There are a variety of end uses to weather forecasts. Weather warnings are important forecasts because they are used to protect life and property. Forecasts based on temperature and precipitation are important to agriculture, and therefore to traders within commodity markets. Temperature forecasts are used by utility companies to estimate demand over coming days. On an everyday basis, people use weather forecasts to determine what to wear on a given day. Since outdoor activities are severely curtailed by heavy rain, snow and the wind chill, forecasts can be used to plan activities around these events, and to plan ahead and survive them.

The first ever daily weather forecasts were published in The Times on 1 August 1861, and the first weather maps were produced later in the same year. In 1911, the Met Office began issuing the first marine weather forecasts via radio transmission. These included gale and storm warnings for areas around Great Britain. In the United States, the first public radio forecasts were made in 1925 by Edward B. "E.B." Rideout, on WEEI, the Edison Electric Illuminating station in Boston. Rideout came from the U.S. Weather Bureau, as did WBZ weather forecaster G. Harold Noyes in 1931.

The world's first televised weather forecasts, including the use of weather maps, were experimentally broadcast by the BBC in 1936. This was brought into practice in 1949 after World War II. George Cowling gave the first weather forecast while being televised in front of the map in 1954. In America, experimental television forecasts were made by James C Fidler in Cincinnati in either 1940 or 1947 on the DuMont Television Network. In the late 1970s and early 80s, John Coleman, the first weatherman on ABC-TV's Good Morning America, pioneered the use of on-screen weather satellite information and computer graphics for television forecasts. Coleman was a co-founder of The Weather Channel (TWC) in 1982. TWC is now a 24-hour cable network.