Weather Forecasting

Weather Forecasting

Introduction

The most important thing that a meteorological department provides to the world is weather forecast and weather warnings. This warning is both mild and severe in nature, thus necessary precautions are to be taken against it. The impact of the weather forecast and the weather is quite hard to overstate (Casanova & Ahrens, 2009). As according to a report, eighty percent of emergency declared in United States by Federal Emergency Management Agency are directly or indirectly related to Weather.

According to the department of transportation there are more than 6000 fatalities recorded per year, these are the direct or indirect result of the weather. In the recent years, the heat waves and other weather fires are the cause of 1000 people death on an annual basis. Flooding has hiked in the past three decades, mostly due to changing weather. The flooding in Mississippi in 1993 cost around 15 - 20 billion dollars to the national exchequer; it also resulted in the death of around 48 people (Haslam and Taylor, 1997). The changing weather is also resulting in increased number of cyclone in the world; this is also seriously affecting United States. The most recent example is the Super storm Sandy; it cost United States around $ 20 billion in property damages and $10 - $30 billion in terms of business loss. This storm also resulted in 33 deaths all over USA.

As the population is growing all over the worlds, the economic impact of the weather is increasing steadily. During the last decade, the cost related to the insurance because of hail, wind, tornadoes and snow has increased by a factor of five (Haslam and Taylor, 1997). The changing weather of the world is affecting every citizen, every industry and every country of the world in all aspects. According to an estimate ninety percent of the public regularly, consult forecast twice or once on a daily basis. Thus, the importance of accurate weather forecasting has become the major need of this time. More resources should be diverted to this sector so that ultimate welfare of the society can be achieved.

History of Weather Prediction

The weather forecasting is being done through ages. The early civilizations used meteorological events and reoccurring astronomical events, which helped them in monitoring seasonal changes occurring in weather. Using optical phenomena like haloes and appearance of clouds in 650 BC, the Babylonians were the first to predict the weather (Halford, 2004). The Chinese around 300 BC were able to divide their calendar into 24 different festivals all of them were associated with different weather condition.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle in 340 BC wrote Meteorologica, this was a philosophical treatise, which included theories relating to clouds, rain, thunder, wind, hurricanes and lightings. In the treatise, Aristotle was able to make acute observation of the weather, which was used for the next 2000 years (Haslam and Taylor, 1997). However, in 17 century most of the Aristotle ideas were over thrown into the dust.

Attempts were made throughout the century to produce accurate forecast of the weather ...