------- How is Tuesday's Outside Temperature Determined?

[thatsright]

(Didn't really get an answer in OT, so......)

I mean like, sure it will be 60 degrees outside here in Boston; so sez the weatherman on TV. But how does HE know? What tells him this. What?s the ole' secret? I bet a computer just tells him....the lazy bastard.

But seriously..... I know how the weather works generaly. What I'd like to know is the method used, or the technology used to determine air temprature in the future.

 

[f95toli]

Navier-Stokes equation and a very big computer.

 

[thatsright]

Originally posted by: f95toli
Navier-Stokes equation and a very big computer.

Really... Anyone else have an idea on this?

 

[pm]

I agree with F95toli's answer - and commend him for a simple, precise, probably accurate and mildly inscrutable answer.

A good page on it is here:
http://www.scn.org/~bm733/inFAQ.htm

From the page,

With the high speed number crunching of NWP, atmospheric scientists use and generate huge amounts of data. The National Center for Atmospheric Research estimated that in 1997 they maintained computer files totaling 30 terabytes -- 30 trillion (10^12) bytes -- of data. In late 2000 that number had grown to over 200 terabytes. And by early 2003, total data at their Mass Storage Section had continued growing exponentially to over a petabyte -- that's 1024 terabytes, or a mega-gigabyte, if you will.

 

[RossGr]

Of course now days they make extensive use of computer modeling. However, if you simply guess that today will be the same as yesterday you will do about as well or better.

 

[Bill Brasky]

IBM is trying to tackle that exact problem with a research project called Deep Thunder. The goal is to predict the weather 3 to 36 hours into the future with extremely high accuracy. Also, it has a very high resolution of 1 kilometer. So you could type in a city address and find out exactly when it will start raining tomorrow.

Like the others have said, they use computer models based on years of recorded weather patterns.