Are Computers Advancing Our Ability to Predict the Weather?
Now, we get a lot of our information from satellites, commercial planes, as well as ships that are at sea, who all take measurements. There are also buoys that take temperature readings hundreds of miles deep at sea, as well as weather balloons that are released twice a day from satellites from all over the world into our upper atmosphere.
It takes a very skilled, knowledgeable person to read the results from all of this information, thus producing our weather predictions, and as of now, we can only do it up to about four days into the future. Usually forecasts are vague beyond that point, and are more of a prediction relating to past weather, or weather in the next few days.
Many scientists have stated that they believe that the future ability of being able to predict the weather up to two weeks into the future, will more than likely, never happen. This is due to a number of factors, such as ever changing currents, unpredictable storms caused by these changing currents, and many, many other factors.
Still, computers aid in the ability to more accurately predict forecasts. The technology available to analyze and input data is always growing and expanding, the methods of tracking the changing weather and charting these changes, and so forth has become a critical instrument in the meteorologist’s job of predicting weather. In the past few years alone our forecasts have become much more accurate, and our trust in our meteorologists has therefore grown. We rely on the weather to plan activities or events, and without computers, our accuracy in prediction would not be anywhere near where it is today.
The combination of radars, satellites, and our advanced knowledge of computers and technology has together made weather prediction less of a guess. As for advancing to the point of weather forecasts weeks in advance, at this point, it doesn’t look good. But who knows, scientists have made such claims of unlikelihood’s for further advancements before and been wrong, so who knows what will happen with the future of weather and the capabilities of computers teamed up with meteorologists. Maybe it is in our future, we’ll just have to wait and see.
