The Weather Machine
"From the acclaimed author of Tubes, a lively and surprising tour of the infrastructure behind the weather forecast, the people who built it, and what it reveals about our climate and our planet. The weather is the foundation of our daily lives. It's a staple of small talk, the app on our smartphones, and often the first thing we check each morning. Yet behind these quotidian interactions is one of the most expansive machines human beings have ever constructed -- a triumph of science, technology and global cooperation. But what is this 'weather machine' and who created it? In The Weather Machine, Andrew Blum takes readers on a fascinating journey through an everyday miracle. In a quest to understand how the forecast works, he visits old weather stations and watches new satellites blast off. He follows the dogged efforts of scientists to create a supercomputer model of the atmosphere and traces the surprising history of the algorithms that power their work. He discovers that we have quietly entered a golden age of meteorology -- our tools allow us to predict weather more accurately than ever, and yet we haven't learned to trust them, nor can we guarantee the fragile international alliances that allow our modern weather machine to exist.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
5mentions
3people
2021–2026years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- There's reduced data available for initial conditions, so I wonder how that will effect things:
* https://apnews.com/article/weather-forecasts-worsen-doge-tru...
* https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
A good book on the history of forecasting, The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast:
- For folks who are interested, I suggest checking out "The weather machine: a journey inside the forecast" by Andrew Blum[0]. It's a great read into the history of weather forecasting pre-Covid.
- Somewhat related, but I found Andrew Blum's book The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast an interesting read:
> In The Weather Machine, Andrew Blum takes readers on a fascinating journey through an everyday miracle. In a quest to understand how the forecast works, he visits old weather stations and watches new satellites blast off. He follows the dogged efforts of scientists to create a supercomputer model of the atmosphere and traces the surprising history of the algorithms that power their work. He discovers that we have quietly entered a golden age of meteorology—our tools allow us to predict weather more accurately than ever, and yet we haven’t learned to trust them, nor can we guarantee the fragile international alliances that allow our modern weather machine to exist.
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42079139-the-weather-mac...
* https://www.andrewblum.net/the-weather-machine-2
Also his book Tubes, the Internet's physical infrastructure. He also appears to be working on a book on the electrical grid:
- Recommend the book The Weather Machine by Andrew Blume (also wrote Tubes) on some history of forecasting and what happens in the background nowadays:
> In The Weather Machine, Andrew Blum takes readers on a fascinating journey through an everyday miracle. In a quest to understand how the forecast works, he visits old weather stations and watches new satellites blast off. He follows the dogged efforts of scientists to create a supercomputer model of the atmosphere and traces the surprising history of the algorithms that power their work. He discovers that we have quietly entered a golden age of meteorology—our tools allow us to predict weather more accurately than ever, and yet we haven’t learned to trust them, nor can we guarantee the fragile international alliances that allow our modern weather machine to exist.
* https://www.andrewblum.net/the-weather-machine-2
* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/42079139
For the very early history of meteorology, see perhaps The Invention of Clouds about Luke Howard:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1148768.The_Invention_of...
- For a pretty good history and overview of weather prediction check out the book The Weather Machine by Andrew Blum.
* https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-weather-machine-a...
* https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-weather-machine/
At ~220 pages it's a fun little romp.
See also Richard Hamblyn's The Invention of Clouds, a biography on Luke Howard:
> In December 1802, Luke Howard delivered a lecture that was to be a defining point in natural history and meteorology. He named the clouds, classifying them in terms that remain familiar to this day: cirrus, stratus, cumulus, and nimbus. This new and precise nomenclature sparked worldwide interest and captured the imaginations of some of the century's greatest figures in the fields of art, literature, and science. Goethe, Constable, and Coleridge were among those who came to revere Howard's vision of an aerial landscape. Legitimized by the elevation of this new classification and nomenclature, meteorology fast became a respectable science.
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