Gerrit Lohmann describes the role of models well in the context of Earth System Science, he says that they “provide the perspective beyond the local information from observations/reconstructions and show that spatial and temporal patterns are fundamental to understanding Earth systems and processes”(Lohmann 28). Climate change can be an especially polarizing topic, with much disagreement centered around the use of climate models. Meanwhile weather forecasts are often laughed at because humans are able to assess the correctness in a matter of hours. A weather forecast is made with a number of different tools. Meteorologists look at the previous days weather, as well as temperature, pressure, wind, and precipitation often in map format, and they also rely on a bundle of different models (Muller for Accuweather.com). Weather models were fist conceived by Vilhelm Bjerknes in 1904, who also introduced circulation (Thorpe et al. 471). The actual computing power to make an accurate forecast would not be achieved until the mid 1940’s. Lewis Fry Richardson tried and failed to build a weather model in 1922 for lack of better computing power. The best technology at his disposal was a slide ruler and some logarithm tables (Shuman 286). The first models took dynamical laws into account but with only one level of information, manual forecasts were still far superior (Shuman 287). As computational power increased more and more levels were added to account for a wide range of phenomena including the impact of solar radiation, water vapor, latent heat, feedback effects of convective rain, and more topographical detail (Shuman 292). As more was known about each phenomena, the equations in the models were refined. Even though the parameters of the model depend on other technologies to collect data, the skill of the models directly followed the ability of computers.
Works Cited
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/how-do-meteorologists-make-forecast/4716627