Weather Forecasting Models
The science of meteorology is essentially a relatively "new" science when you consider the monumental advancements that have occurred in the last few decades. Meteorologists have armed themselves with a tremendous amount of new instrumentation and computer software and hardware that has revolutionized the science of weather forecasting.
Despite these leaps and bounds forward, we still have a very long way to go.
Today we are going to talk about meteorological forecast models that have enhanced the meteorologists ability to make accurate weather forecasts.
Meteorological Computer Models
Around the world, there is an extensive network of meteorological measurement devices. Temperatures, pressures, humidities, wind velocities, and much more are recorded worldwide by an elaborate network of weather stations, weather balloons, buoys, and remote weather stations called ASOS stations (Automated Surface Observation Systems).
The measurements made by these instruments are continuously streamed into a system of powerful meteorological computer models. These models take the information, and run them through a series of very complicated equations that try to predict the state of the atmosphere at set time increments into the future.
The equations used in these models are called differential equations and they are solved using numerical and calculus-based techniques. These differential equations set out to define a meteorological variable in terms of some time-step interval forward in the future.