Technology used to develop daily weather reports. From politics and prose bookstore in washington dc this runs one hour. [inaudible conversations] good evening everyone of the coowner of politics and prose welcome thank you for coming and congratulations on getting here what a great day to have a book about the weather. If yousn have been following the weather you will have noticed at least two things, first is getting weirder and wilder with bigger storms and freezing temperatureses and greater extremes and second, forecasters are Getting Better at predicting what is about to hit us they still dont get it right 100 percent of the time so with the timeliness of their reports. These days not only of one weather model but of multiple ones simulating the atmosphere the north americanri model the european model, and a number of others forecasting not just todays weather or tomorrow that over the next ten days and beyond. Getting interestedlun he wasnt satisfied with the past explanation to attribute the advances of weather science with the supercomputers or better satellites with a knack for making complex systems accessible which was a primer on the physical infrastructure on thet internet and the Weather Forecast was a similar kind of story. His new book the weather machine is an engaging look at behind the scenes of the International Collaborative effort and it takes to give us the daily weather report. Forecasting has been involved to the Meteorological Organization to introduce readers to the supercoerresting. He will be in conversation this evening with one of washingtons own expert forecasters the weather editor of o the Washington Post and chief meteorologist of the capital weather gang in jason himself is fascinated since his days growing up in the dc region as a High School Student he interned with bob ryan that will recall was the chief meteorologist for the local nbc affiliate and went on to study Atmospheric Science then worked as a Climate Change analyst with the epa. Fifteen years ago established capital weather. Com the first professional weather bloglo on the internet the Washington Post took the blog in 2008 now essentially for anyone who is interested in the weather in the dc area. Please join me to welcome both andrew and adjacent. [applause] hello. Thank you for coming in that great introduction. Im glad to have the chance with the new book on the train this morning jason definitely had a busy day. He agreed to be the interlocutor tonight we first met several years ago when i went to the meeting of the American Meteorological Society in atlanta and knew i wanted to write about this topic trying to figure out the shape and having all the fmeteorologist in one place was definitely a great starting point. What i didnt realize is that there was weather Journalism Community the second i was there i was warmly embraced to go out to about 25 people like ethe American Weather press corps. I think the dean. [laughter] but it was a big help starting off. And then we will open for questions. Its a pleasure to be here tonight the first time i ever took in huber from the ams in that meeting in atlanta to the airport back in 2014. Five years ago. As preparation for this event i read the book but it was a joy. I found myself smiling like sometimes you watch a great concert or singer and a smile comes across your face because you are amused how powerful the performance is. The writing is elegant with a lot of excellent narratives and anecdotes. It does get my high recommendation. So lets get started with q a. So lets begin with motivation for the book and what makes you decide all of a sudden you wanted to write a book about Weather Forecasting . My background is writing about architecture and places and you cant write about places without thinking about the weather but thats very hard to write about especially if you are not a meteorologist or atmospheric m scientist. The words slip away with a constant challenge between the view get your umbrella and the catastrophic and that combination to meteorologist to writean about the weather in deal in any daily basis to switch registers from the cherry to the catastrophic is the biggest challenge so knowing that i wanted to write about the weather was that Hurricane Sandy in 2012 which was the moment for all a lot of us the weather models suddenlythemselves there was a public conversation about the european and American Weather model and astonishing forecast it is sunday afternoon was the first inkling for sandy which arrived theh following monday night and that exceeded all my understanding of what meteorologist were capable of not only theirni human ability but their pattern recognition and the manual assimilation earlier they built systems that were astonishing that far exceeded my understanding of how they worked but yet the question of the weather models and how they work was very hard to answer. This incredible black box and that type of complex infrastructure story to recognize if i could figure out how these models work or to tell a story about them that is meaningful and a story to be told and i may have underestimated their complexity. Everyone one anybody here work with weather models . There is a very small pool of people who work on them and improve them. The entry to recognize their part is significant but to check the boxes so important for me but just the system we touch every single day with the idea that there is incredibly complex computer we ckcarry in our pocket and here its a story i wanted to tell that you cannot tell without going back in time with the history and the way that i approach that. Lets talk about the history and those pioneering scientists in the 18 hundreds that have modern day numerical weather prediction though scientist in england and norway that those early contributors and how important the work they did was to the advancements of weather predictions today. There is the history of the storm a chasers and these heroic stories of wind speeds and seather maps and then another history of mathematicians and when i start to think about how to tell this other history it isrtel distinct and it very much begins and its amazing because he occupies both and comes up with the idea in the turn of the 19th century to calculate the weather and use those equations to describe the atmosphere and what it would do next with the insight that each days calculation if you could calculate the weather you can prove the next day if you were right or wrong. And then do that on a daily basis which is the process of improvement that has got to us to the incredible point we are at today. But to say so those models ashave improved by a decade or over the last 40 years so it was the four day forecast a few years ago but that rate is not diminishing it is increasing with a two week forecast by 2025. So this improvement goes back to the idea each days forecast is a science experiment and you can try again the next a day. But the mathematicians actually tried and realize you would need 64000 computers which is 64000 people which could be arranged in a stadium and they each get their square of atmosphere and that is where they would do the calculations and pass them up to the front and maybe that would work to calculate the weather fast enough of course it has to be donee before it comes or is not useful. So that in the ability to calculate or those lack of computers to calculate essentially meant their ideas had to wait 50 years until computers and satellites came bin and then another 50 years for the models to be useful beyond the human scale not just guidance but to exceed the capability of meteorologist so thehe now yes there is a human check but many will still say they dont work. It is remarkable how goodtr those forecasting models are today forecasting down to the second so one of the developments as we fast forward to the fifties and sixties talking about weathert satellites so talk about the history and how they played such an integral role and the major discoveries and breakthroughs with that technology. The Key Technology for longerrange forecast, you need a global view. You really talk about the weather globally. So for a global view you need a global instrument. Some in the sixties you need to have the first inkling of that. So it is the month of apollo but they come out at the same oconjoined military effort without the dollars spent for the missile race no weather tsatellites and the scientific ideasli that are hand in hand. Until quite notably with kennedy the moons shot speech that we put a man on the moon before the decade iss out was bullet pointr number one. Number two was Nuclear Rockets for deep space travel. Have this basic impetus for a global view in the same speech is the moonshot speech and the most famous interceptor speech and then you have it based rooted in the idea of the International Cooperation that kennedy like the weather because it was a point of cooperation and sure enough, the thing is that speech in the later speech in the fall at the un that this annihilation speech was answer that can be proposed for togetherness for an alternative for peace was cooperation on weather observation and whether operation in control got left behind. That idea that from the very beginning it was about diplomatic cooperation between meteorologists from every country in order to make global data out of Global Infrastructure to eventually support global models and gives this route of cooperation that begins the 19th century but current incarnation was very much inspired by kennedys idea of a global vision. That is pretty or continues today and someone quietly and i think we often dont look beyond American Weather service but everything depends on this global pool of data. Absolutely. Clearly the data. So critical to todays weather models whether you talking about the weather balloon data or groundbased sensors and of course you just talked about Weather Satellites and Weather Satellites are superexpensive and cost of government billions of dollars but without them our forecasts would not be where they are. Obviously the Weather Satellite data observations from groundbased sensors, weather balloons, they beat these models and you went to two Different Centers to learn more about weather models but went to the National Center in boulder and the European Center for forecasting i did not put that in the book. Talk about your experiences and the appreciation game for these models and touched this out a little bit. And what makes these models work and what amount of intellect is required to run these models and who are the people who are doing this work and how have they been able to be so successful in improving Weather Forecaster for time . This competition between american and european model is short but whats amazing is visiting as a journalist the cleaner im looking for cleaner stories for more legible stories and its amazing to me the cleaner stories come from cleaner places. The places that have a coherent organization and has a very focused Mission Statement are much easier to describe and write about. They are often, i find, more successful because of that. With weather models the fact that we take the starting point that okay theres this weather model and its the best to see or go visit the source of that European Center which is outside of london in redding and the collaboration funded by i think its 32 yes, 32 European Countries that are contributing sending both scientists in money with this singular goal of running the best Global Weather model. They do it by combining the Research People and whether model operation people are single buildings and its amazing cafeteria has become a cliche in the tech culture but i cannot believe anyone got work done because the cafeteria was always full. They had the most beautiful coffee machines. [laughter] that constant day by day effort to consider what the model was doing and what he was spitting out and how it could be improved as a system was really tangible where it is built in not just in daily but internal wiki of comments on this is weird so why is it doing this and to codify with weekly meetings one of which i observed and wrote about and this constant sense of what is a model doing and how could he be doing it better. The key point is that when you say or talk about it is a well mother whether model of convocation meatgrinder where the present goes in and future comes out but its about an ongoing simulation of the atmosphere that every six hours or 12 hours is compared to the most recent observations the real atmosphere and correct it slightly to better match that and that duet of the simulated atmosphere clicking Forward Together with the simulated running faster time to give us what we call forecast. It makes you realize to make the forecast better means to make the simulation better. Not just in some statistical improvement based on past weather but more about actually using the equations to simulate the atmosphere in a way that is close enough to reality that it can then when its run forward forward faster than time it spits out the weather of the future. To see how eager the people at the European Center were to make sure they were getting it right which is not just to say they were getting the forecast right but to say that the simulation they were building most closely resembles the real atmosphere for all the right reasons. The actual physics maps not just getting lucky repeatedly and thats not Machine Learning and not a project problem in the way elections or other sort of baseball or other protected problems but its unique and uniquely successful. This is something we all use everything that they mostly right. Does that answer your culture question . , to divide they were competitive and want to be to the other modeling centers around the world . Thats all they talked about. [laughter] no, when you say why are you doing this they say no and that was theres a lot of ongoing discussion about the modeling competition and there is a sense that it keeps everyone that it lights the fire and keeps everyone improving their models faster but there is a sense that they need or do it and they the u. S. Models are convoluted by having to serve different masters in different models in everyone says we run 12 models and they only run one but while that is true the singular focus on this basically tenday simulation of the atmosphere makes their collaboration and their competitiveness very productive. And much more of a streamlined process. So, obviously we talked about how great Weather Forecasts are but theres a saying here that your Weather Forecast can be one 100 accurate but if people make the wrong decision based on an accurate forecast the forecast is useless. That was when i began to understand that about what makes a good forecast. How does the forecast informed decisionmaking . Does the forecaster provide the end user the information they need so that if theres a wedding reception coming up that they will go to for example, they will have a tent or not to have a tent to keep their guests dry. You talk about that decisional support expect in your book and you think Weather Forecasting centers both in the european and the United States gain a better appreciation of the importance of the social lines connecting the physical science that is the forecast with the decision . Is the place where the american not Just NationalWeather Service but broader enterprises is excelling is this emphasize these new links between this forecast and the tactical sense of the decisions you make based on it. I think i write about a guy named tim palmer who was at oxford in at the European Center but he tells this amazing story about its not as simple as will it rain or not lorraine but how sure in what decisions can be based on that . The story he tells if youre having a picnic and the queen is coming 20 is just enough to order ten but if its 80 for just friends then you might not so its that sense of how or what the use of a better forecast if it doesnt help our decisions. That is reasonable with the daytoday forecast just because it was clear it would rain monday morning in dc from four days ago but was not clear how it would rain and we were talking before at what point this morning does it seem like things are getting intense and unfortunately what decisions with people have made differently had this days forecast and clear. That idea that you can strive technically for the perfect forecast but if it does not help you make decisions meteorologists love it because it acknowledges that they are right and the ball is in some ways out of record but its only out of the court if you recognize that the technical superiority and technical achievement of the forecast itself. But you still get angry emails. Yeah, for sure. I think Weather Forecasts have come a long way and were good at capturing what we call synoptic scale weather systems, largescale systems from lowpressure systems but when it comes to forecasting individual thunderstorms this is what we had this morning models are still just developing in that area. We have what we call convection allowing models which try to get thunderstorms and small scale weather features correct. InterNational Weather community