01 introduction

Introduction to Meteorology
and Weather Forecasting
ENVI1400 : 10 Credits
Dr. Ian Brooks
School of Earth & Environment : ibrooks@env.leeds.ac.uk

ENVI1400 : Meteorology and Forecasting : lecture 1 2
Course Website & Contact
• http://www.env.leeds.ac.uk/~ibrooks/envi1400
– Notes, links, and data required for forecast exercises
will be made available via this site throughout the
course
– Met. charts and satellite imagery are collected
automatically and updated every 6, 12, or 24 hours
• Email: ibrooks@env.leeds.ac.uk
• Office : room 3.25 School of Earth &
Environment (Environment Building)

Reading List
Core Texts:
• ‘Atmosphere, Weather & Climate’. Barry, Roger G., and Chorley,
Richard J; Routledge, 2003.
– Chapters 3, 4, and 5 particularly relevant.
• ‘Meteorology Today: An Introduction to Weather, Climate, and
The Environment’, Ahrens, C. Donald; Thomson/Brooks/Cole,
2003.
More Advanced Texts:
(recommended for B.Sc. Meteorology & Atmospheric Science)
• ‘Fundamentals of Weather and Climate’. McIlveen, Robin; Chapman & Hall,
1992.
• ‘The Physics of Atmospheres’. Houghton, J.; Cambridge University Press,
2002.
Of Interest – History & Biography (not in library):
• ‘Air Apparent: How Meteorologists Learned to Map, Predict, and Dramatize
Weather’. Monmonier, Mark; University of Chicago Press, 1999.
• ‘FitzRoy: The Remarkable Story of Darwin's Captain and the Invention of
the Weather Forecast’ . Gribbin, John & Mary; Headline, 2003.

Met. Resources Online
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/home.rxml
– Basic meteorology course
http://www.metoffice.com/education/index.html
– Guides to interpretation of charts and imagery, and access to some
current data
http://www.weather.org.uk/
– A wide variety of current meteorological data, analysis and forecast
charts, etc. Links to lots of other sites.
http://www.wetterzentrale.de/topkarten/fsfaxsem.html
– Analysis and forecast charts for Europe from a variety of agencies and
models (including UK Met Office)
http://grads.iges.org/pix/euro.fcst.html
– Analysis & forecast charts for Europe issued by National Centers for
Environmental Prediction.
http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary
– ‘Glossary of Meteorology’ from the American Meteorological Society

040909

040914

Course Outline
• 10 Lectures (Monday 12-1, Parkinson B10)
– Introduce basic concepts of meteorology
– Emphasis on physical processes not
theoretical or mathematical treatments
• ~8 x 1-hour workshops
(Thursday 2-3 Parkinson B11)
– Hands-on forecasting exercises
– Problem solving
– worksheets

2002-01-31 12:05

Meteorology, Weather, & Climate
• Meteorology is the study of phenomena
of the atmosphere – includes the
dynamics, physics, and chemistry of the
atmosphere. (from the Greek meteōros – ‘lofty’)
• More commonly thought of as restricted to
the dynamics and thermodynamics of the
atmosphere as it affects human life.

• Weather
– The state of the atmosphere; mainly with respect to its
effects upon human activities. Short term variability of
the atmosphere (time scales of minutes to months).
Popularly thought of in terms of: temperature, wind,
humidity, precipitation, cloudiness, brightness, and
visibility.
– A category of individual/combined atmospheric
phenomena which describe the conditions at the time
of an observation.
• Climate
– Long term statistical description of the atmospheric
conditions, averaged over a specified period of time -
usually decades.

Why study meteorology?
• Warning of severe
weather
• Agriculture
– Timing of planting,
harvesting, etc to avoid bad
weather, hazards to
livestock
• Transport & services
– Shipping, aviation, road
gritting, flood warnings,…
• Commerce
– Should a supermarket
order BBQs and icecream,
or umbrellas?
November 14, 1854: A sudden storm
devastated a joint British-French fleet
near Balaklava in the Black Sea.
French astronomer Urbain Jean
Joseph Le Verrier (1811-1877)
demonstrated that telegraphed
observations could have given the
ships a day to prepare.
In England, Capt. Robert FitzRoy
(1805-1865) started the
Meteorological Office as a small
department of the board of trade. On
September 3rd 1860, 15 stations
began reporting 8am observations.
February 5,1861 started issuing storm
warnings to ports.

What do we want to know?
• Temperature
• Wind speed
• Wind direction
• Clouds
– Type, extent, altitude
• Precipitation?
– Type, amount, location
• Visibility
– Fog, haze
• Humidity
• Trends in all of these
• Timing of significant
changes
• Occurrence of
extreme events

How far ahead?
• Ideally:
– as far ahead as possible!
• In practice
– 3-5 days is the limit of
reasonable quantitative
forecasts.
– Medium-range forecasts
(5-10) days are made, but
limited to large-scale
pressure field and winds,
NOT detailed conditions.

Methods of Forecasting
• Persistence Method:
– Tomorrow will be much the same as today
Today’s Weather Tomorrow’s Forecast
Clear skies, 19C, low winds Clear skies, 19C, low winds
Works well when conditions change only slowly. Also surprisingly effective for general forecasts of
periods >10 days, for which most other – more advanced – methods lose all their skill. Several weeks
of hot sunny weather often followed by several more.

Statistical methods
Simple statistics: climatology
• Given a long record of past weather on every day of the year,
forecast most frequently observed weather for day of interest.
Works well, provided the general conditions are similar to the ‘usual’ or most
common conditions for the time of year. Requires long records – many years – to
provide reasonable statistics
Analog method
• Given a long record of the sequence of weather conditions, look for
a past sequence that resembles the last few days to weeks, and
forecast whatever followed it.
Difficult to use effectively because of difficulty in finding a close match
between current and past conditions. Again, requires records going
back many years.

Trends:
• Estimate the speed at
which features – fronts,
pressure centres, etc – are
moving. Allows estimation
of time of arrival.
• Requires measurements
over a wide area.
• Applied over a period of a
few hours this method is
called NowCasting. Very
effective use of rainfall
radar imagery.

Physical Understanding
• An extensive set of measurements over a wide
area, coupled with an understanding of the
physical processes allows general conditions to
be assessed and forecasts to be made for a
wide area a day or two ahead.

MetOffice Analysis : 2004-04-24 12:00

NCEP Analysis 2004-04-24 12:00

AVHRR
False colour composite
2004-04-24 16:34

Physical Processes
• Thermal – atmospheric dynamics are
ultimately driven by temperature gradients
arising from uneven solar heating
• Pressure gradient forces – immediate
cause of horizontal motions
• Moisture – effect of water vapour content
on air density, and release of latent heat
has a major impact on convection

Numerical Weather Prediction
• Physical processes are reduced to a (simplified)
set of equations that describe changes of
physical quantities in time & space. These are
initialized with latest observations and stepped
forward in time to produce a forecast.
• Requires:
– an extensive set of simultaneous measurements over
a wide area (synoptic observations) to initialize it
– Fast, powerful computer
– Adequate representation of the physical processes

First numerical forecast made in
1922 by Lewis Fry Richardson.
Took several months, calculating
by hand, to produce a 6-hour
forecast.
It failed…badly!
But, it demonstrated the means of
producing quantitative forecasts. Its
failure has since been shown to be
due to the limited understanding of
some atmospheric processes at the
time.
L. F. Richardson’s computational grid: Pressure is
determined in squares marked ‘P’, momentum in
those marked ‘M’.

First successful forecast: 1950 by
Jule Charney, Fjörtoft, and von
Neumann, using ENIAC.
A 24-hour forecast took 33 days
to produce, working day and
night.

Modern forecast models include
the whole globe at a horizontal
resolution of up to ~1° (~111km).
Region of interest modelled at
~10km resolution.
Forecasts made every 12 or 24
hours for 0000 and 1200 GMT
(sometimes 0600 and 1800) for
up to 5 days ahead.
Meteo-France MetOffice

Summary
• Meteorology is important to a wide variety
of activities
• A huge array of meteorological information
is freely available
• With a basic understanding of the physical
processes involved YOU can make timely
and accurate forecasts

01 introduction

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