Over the years, weather forecasting has bettered itself due to the launching of various new weather satellites and the improvement in technology. Modern technology has introduced many devices such as professional weather station, satellites, ships, airplanes, buoys, weather balloons, etc. Climatologists and Meteorologists use the data sent by these devices and utilize two basic types of forecasting: deterministic and probabilistic.
A deterministic approach predicts a specific event occurring at a precise location and place. The arrival of a hurricane and the touchdown of a tornado are some examples of this type of weather prediction. While the probabilistic type just guesses the probability of some specific weather conditions for a set period of time. For example, the continuity of a storm for a few days is an example of this type of weather prediction.
The climatic changes caused by the excess of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere bring frustration to the forecasters. This outside influence never follows any seasonal trends or averages and makes it really very hard to predict weather. They have to rely completely on the emergency alert system to predict properly under such circumstances.
Methods for predicting the weather
Both meteorologists and climatologists use several methods for predicting the weather changes properly and accurately with the help of modern technology. The most commonly used methods are:
Climatology Method
In this simple method of generating a weather forecast, the meteorologists review weather statistics gathered over the multiple years. Based upon these statistics, they calculate the averages and predict the weather for a specific day and location accordingly. Their prediction is based upon the weather conditions for that same day and location for several years in the past. This clearly implies that this method can hold well only when the weather patterns remain in place. This method will not give accurate forecast when the outside factors like global warming change the climate too frequently.
Ana-log Method
This method requires finding a day in the past with the weather conditions similar to the current forecast. That is why this method is difficult to follow, for the forecaster has to predict the same type of weather based on the Ana-log comparison. The small differences between the past and the present conditions may change the whole forecast altogether. As a whole, we can say that this method is not a trustworthy one for the accurate forecast.
Persistence and Trends Method
This method requires you only to stay abreast of current temperatures and conditions while keeping the region’s climate averages in your mind. No extraordinary skills are required in this method because it bounds you to be persistent with the past trends. What actually is happening is the fact that the atmosphere is changing slowly in an ideal world. This makes it quite possible that today’s forecast holds true for tomorrow as well. So, the meteorologists predict the weather forecast by using the past trends.
Numerical weather prediction
The best method to predict the weather forecast so far is the numerical weather prediction based upon the data provided by the supercomputers. These massive super computers are equipped with software forecasting models to predict weather based upon multiple conditions in the atmosphere. These conditions include temperature, wind speed, high-and-low pressure systems, rainfall, snowfall and other conditions. The algorithm used by the computer’s software to predict the weather determines the quality of the forecast made. Errors result if there is lack of precision in some of the equations but, nevertheless, this is the best method so far.
Based on the modern technology, these are some of the methods using which the meteorologists predict the weather forecast.
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