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WeatherNext 2: Our most advanced weather forecasting model

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291 points meetpateltech | 1 comments | 17 Nov 25 15:04 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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lampiaio ◴[17 Nov 25 21:27 UTC] No.45958532[source]▶
Reminds me of a funny WWII story:

Kenneth Arrow and his statisticians found that their long-range forecasts were no better than numbers pulled out of a hat. The forecasters agreed and asked their superiors to be relieved of this duty. The reply was: "The Commanding General is well aware that the forecasts are no good. However he needs them for planning purposes."

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cogman10 ◴[17 Nov 25 23:09 UTC] No.45959504[source]▶
I think it was a stats class where I learned this, but as it turns out bad weather is less common than good weather. To be a fairly accurate weather person, you merely need to say "there will be no precipitation" and you'll be right like 90% of the time anywhere on earth.

What makes that funny is that historically, weather forecasters have been less than 90% accurate.

Now, I will say that today's weather models are pretty dang amazing. The 10 day forecast rarely wrong for me.

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1. themafia ◴[18 Nov 25 08:04 UTC] No.45962550[source]▶
The Space Shuttle had weather constraints that meant it could launch on only about 30% of days. The issue was upper atmosphere winds, and if they weren't predicted accurately, it would result in overloads on the vehicle frame possibly sending it off course or becoming destroyed during ascent.

One of the major upgrades to the platform was to allow "day of use I-Loads." Effectively, they could update some constants in the shuttle software image, by literally patching new binary values into the code, while the vehicle was loaded and ready on the launch pad.

Then the game was to launch rockets to measure the upper atmosphere wind properties, convert them into usable constants, and then to update the software. It took the shuttle from having launch opportunities 30% of the time to having them 70% of the time later in the program.

Anyways..