The development of computer mod-els that simulate the Earth's atmo-sphere, allowing us to predict weatherand anticipate climate change, is oneof the triumphs of 20th-century sci-ence. Weather forecasting used to bevery hit-and-miss, based on roughrules of thumb and the assumptionthat similar weather patterns wouldevolve in a similar manner. But from1950 onwards, digital computers re-volutionized the field, transformingit from a woolly empirical activity toa precise, quantitative, science-basedprocedure. Weather forecasting wasamong the first computational sci-ences and is still a major applicationfor high-end computers today. InWeather by the Numbers, the historianKristine Harper tells the fascinatingstory of how numerical weather pre-diction became possible.
展开▼
