[HN Gopher] The unnecessary decline of U.S. numerical weather pr...
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The unnecessary decline of U.S. numerical weather prediction
Author : carabiner
Score : 162 points
Date : 2024-10-28 08:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (cliffmass.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cliffmass.blogspot.com)
| ttyprintk wrote:
| This is a valuable blog on the subject, and his answer explains
| how the US could rectify.
|
| But NWS didn't correct their hurricane forecast to the whims of a
| mercurial President. Talking about the technicalities of the
| model library is fine but only after you pass the loyalty test.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Also I heard many smart people in NOAA left between 2016 and
| 2020 to go private and funding cuts. I would not be surprise
| many in NOAA are looking to leave now.
|
| I wonder if the listeria issues occurring now is also a symptom
| of this plus the FDA funding cuts over the past 20+ years.
| clumsysmurf wrote:
| Project 2025 describes NOAA as a primary component "of the
| climate change alarm industry" and said it "should be broken
| up and downsized." Talent is probably worried about the
| future political climate as well.
|
| https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FUL.
| ..
| cratermoon wrote:
| It's will known that AccuWeather's president Joel Myers and
| his younger brother (now former) AccuWeather CEO Barry Lee
| Myers want to kill public domain weather report data. https
| ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AccuWeather#National_Weather_S...
| Barry was nominated (but never confirmated) for Under
| Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere and Administrator,
| National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
|
| While AccuWeather denies involvement in Project 2025,
| there's definitely overlap between TFG's administration and
| the authors of the plan.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _It 's will known that AccuWeather's president Joel
| Myers and his younger brother (now former) AccuWeather
| CEO Barry Lee Myers want to kill public domain weather
| report data._
|
| John Oliver of all people had a segment on this:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGn9T37eR8
|
| * https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11110660/
|
| * https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/oct/14/john-
| oliver-...
|
| * https://time.com/5699545/john-oliver-weather-last-week-
| tonig...
| counters wrote:
| I haven't heard anything about NOAA having any new issues
| with workforce retention.
|
| The trend you're seeing in private sector expansion / growth
| is linked to the massive investments in Earth observation and
| derivative applications. It's not really a response to
| anything happening in government. If anything, the federal
| government forced some of this growth through commitments
| like the Commercial Weather Data Program.
| ironhaven wrote:
| You can draw a strong connection from in 2019[1] when the
| USDA allowed slaughterhouses to self inspect to the recent
| listeria outbreaks.
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/09/17/761682926
| /us...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yes, indeed, the more they start sucking at things, the more
| money we should give them. This will incentivize not sucking.
| mturmon wrote:
| Red hat at the end positions this as a job application?
| lithos wrote:
| More like declaring the real plan of setting up one org that
| needs to be privatized.
|
| There have been real attempts at privatization of weather
| services in the US, despite the fact that our current system
| costs pennies a day per person (whether it's used for weather
| apps, or safe flying/sailing).
| momoschili wrote:
| unlikely that there is good precedent for a private weather
| organization. The gold standard for western weather
| prediction is the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather
| Forecasts and that is a collaboration between multiple
| government agencies.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The "lets privatize essential parts of the government"
| folks do not care about precedent, or what is a good idea.
| They are driven by ideology and self dealing.
| momoschili wrote:
| even Cliff himself (somewhat right leaning in today's
| American political environment) did not go so far in his
| blog. Cliff often speaks very highly of the European
| weather forecasts, and in his blog post it seems pretty
| clear that he is using it as the model for most of the
| suggestions.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| The problem is that his well-meaning statements are going
| to be used as ammo to privatize NOAA, much like someone's
| well-meaning statements were used to create turmoil in
| Springfield, Missouri.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Cliff Mass has this kind of weird position on climate
| change where here fully agrees that it is real and a
| serious concern, while simultaneously questioning the
| extent to which it is human-caused and disputing specific
| weather events as the negative effects of climate change.
| influx wrote:
| I'm curious about where we draw the line on questioning
| scientific consensus.
|
| Take Cliff Mass - he's a professor of Atmospheric
| Sciences at UW whose research focuses on weather
| modeling, climate systems, and atmospheric dynamics. When
| someone with his expertise raises questions about climate
| science conclusions, should we approach this differently
| than when non-experts do so?
|
| This raises an interesting question about the role of
| expertise and scientific discourse: Is there a meaningful
| distinction between how we treat challenges to consensus
| from qualified researchers in the field versus those from
| outside it? Or should acceptance of consensus apply
| equally regardless of one's credentials?
| momoschili wrote:
| As an imperfect analogy, Stephen Wolfram is a fairly
| successful theoretical physicist by academic standards
| with considerable expertise, yet his theories on
| fundamental physics and its interpretations are
| considered fringe in the physics community because he
| most of what he spins is untestable conjecture.
|
| Individuals who disagree with the scientific consensus
| aren't always wrong, but most of the time they are. What
| separates these people is the amount of evidence they can
| bring to the table.
| lispisok wrote:
| He doesnt challenge scientific consensus. What he does
| challenge is people making any claim they want then
| adding "because climate change" at the end which has
| become a problem. One side will deny climate change and
| the other side starting taking any claim at face value as
| long as you say "because climate change"
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _unlikely that there is good precedent for a private
| weather organization._
|
| When has something being a bad idea or never having been
| tried stopped political apparatchik's from trying,
| especially given past appointee's opinions:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGn9T37eR8
|
| * https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11110660/
|
| * https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/oct/14/john-
| oliver-...
|
| * https://time.com/5699545/john-oliver-weather-last-week-
| tonig...
|
| See also Project 2025:
|
| > _The document describes NOAA as a primary component "of
| the climate change alarm industry" and said it "should be
| broken up and downsized."_
|
| [...]
|
| > _Project 2025 would not outright end the National Weather
| Service. It says the agency "should focus on its data-
| gathering services," and "should fully commercialize its
| forecasting operations."_
|
| > _It said that "commercialization of weather technologies
| should be prioritized to ensure that taxpayer dollars are
| invested in the most cost-efficient technologies for high
| quality research and weather data." Investing in commercial
| partners will increase competition, Project 2025 said._
|
| * https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/sep/26/jared-
| mosk...
| jordanb wrote:
| Yeah that was my take too considering most of his argument is
| "spin it out of NOAA" and consolidate. The whole thing seems
| like a standard MBA reorg plan.
|
| Also I don't think his data supports his argument. He shows,
| for instance, that GFS and ECMWF track each other in his own
| quality metric, that modern GFS is basically the same quality
| as ECMWF was in 2012, and that they are slowly converging.
| This is hardly a "decline."
|
| The reason why ECMWF and GFS track eachother is that they're
| using the same data! The dominant limit on how good weather
| prediction can be is the amount and quality of the initial
| state data. ECMWF is proof that GFS could improve still, but
| let's be real: it's very good and unlike ECMWF it is free.
|
| That, I think, is the real problem this guy has. The
| Accuweather CEO (who is a Trump supporter) and a lot of the
| private meteorology industry want NOAA to get out of the
| business of weather forecasting so that they can charge
| people for lifesaving information.
|
| They pump ECMWF mostly because it's not free. Even the data
| showing it is superior is often somewhat cherry picked. For
| instance, it missed Hurricane Milton for quite a while while
| GFS was predicting its development and ultimate path pretty
| accurately.
| plantain wrote:
| ECMWF is working towards being free/open-data by 2026.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| >We eat her models
|
| Oh, the keming.
|
| But I agree. Seeing that privatization of government agencies
| is part of the platform, this sounds like "I'm not endorsing,
| but..."
| sampo wrote:
| > Gr eat again
| carabiner wrote:
| Cliff Mass has been tenured at U-Dub for decades. The guy could
| have moved private to finance (energy trading, other
| commodities highly correlated with weather) to multiply his
| income, but didn't.
| advisedwang wrote:
| I think the comment you are replying to is suggesting he's
| angling to get appointed NOAA administrator or some similar
| role by Trump, if he wins. I can see someone whose dedicated
| their life to weather and has major criticisms of government
| policy there wanting that job but not being interested in a
| mere well paying private sector job.
| counters wrote:
| Being the NOAA administrator is a particularly not-fun role
| if you're primarily a research scientist. I _highly_ doubt
| Cliff Mass is on any short lists for this job. Several
| folks from private industry immediately come to mind as
| likely picks, mostly from the venture capital-infused
| weather analytics industry.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I just applied for a job at noaa after being asked by a director
| to apply for the job which was directly related to updating the
| core weather modelling libraries, some of which are 50+ years old
| Fortran, and also develop projects to integrate modern ai/ml into
| the modelling pipeline. I have 10+ years of experience working
| both as a researcher and a developer, a PhD in physics, and have
| won multiple grants either applying machine learning to
| geophysics problems or develop Bayesian spatiotemporal modeling
| libraries. At least on paper, I should get an interview for this
| job. I was rejected because:
|
| > We are not able to determine your qualifications as your resume
| does not show complete information for each job entry, such as
| beginning and ending dates of employment, duties performed,
| and/or total hours worked per week
|
| First, my cv did include everything but the total hours worked
| per week. Second there was no instruction that I could find for
| writing my CV such that I needed to list the number of hours
| worked per week. Third there was no way to contest this. Even the
| person who invited me to apply who would be the hiring manager
| had no control over this.
|
| I can tell you, this assuredly leads to the unnecessary decline
| of any system when there's an impenetrable hr system sitting
| between applicants and jobs.
| brudgers wrote:
| Because NOAA is part of the Federal government, expect job
| applications to be inspected technically detailed relative to
| compliance with a mountain of Federal statutes and regulations.
|
| Because people who don't get hired can literally get their
| Congressional and Senate representatives involved.
|
| This makes getting hired into the Civil Service hard. Internal
| candidates are usually at an advantage. Veterans always are.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I'm currently a civil servant of Norway. They seem to have it
| figured out. Haha. But yeah I get you.
| warner25 wrote:
| > Internal candidates are usually at an advantage. Veterans
| always are.
|
| The system is as you described. Internal candidates already
| know it and veterans, when transitioning out of uniformed
| service, get a full-blown class on it: how to prepare their
| "Federal resume" (which is unlike any resume that a
| reasonable person might otherwise prepare) and navigate the
| hiring process. So it's that on top of already having
| relevant experience and credentials or preference points.
|
| I've been on the hiring side for Federal GS positions, and
| I'll tell you that it can be just as frustrating on that side
| too.
| rookderby wrote:
| That sucks. Did NOAA have their own application site or did you
| go through USAJOBs? I would recommend to you or others reading
| this that if you're applying through USAJOBs, then make sure to
| enter your resume information in the USAJobs resume builder to
| help prevent bureaucratic failures like this. HR probably
| didn't know what they were reading or weren't able to read your
| CV; they probably based their decision off of the USAJobs
| resume.
|
| https://help.test.usajobs.gov/how-to/account/documents/resum...
| lordgrenville wrote:
| That's crazy. Why would the number of hours worked per week
| ever possibly be relevant to a hiring process? At most they
| might ask "full-time/part-time/other" or something like that.
| sampo wrote:
| I am sure somebody somewhere has tried to claim having had an
| academic position at a university, while actually they were
| working at 4 hours per week as a teaching assistant for one
| course.
| stackskipton wrote:
| Because Full-Time/Part-Time/Other is too imprecise for
| government. What if you consider full time is 25 hours
| because you were going to school? Well, you worked less on
| something but claim to have same experience at someone who
| worked 40.
|
| Government has to comply with all these standards and by
| asking for hours, they can make sure themselves that someone
| meets them.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Yeah, I nope out of any application that requires manual entry
| of each employer etc.
| toast0 wrote:
| Wait, they asked for a resume and you provided a CV. Gonna have
| a hard time when you start on the wrong foot with government
| work ;p
| dylan604 wrote:
| I was waiting for the classic in triplicate req wasn't
| followed.
| bee_rider wrote:
| This is doubly stupid for an organization that would probably
| want to hire people right out of grad school, right? Where the
| hours are all day and the contracts are for however much the
| program has laying around at the moment.
| concerndc1tizen wrote:
| A simple explanation is: corruption.
|
| HR in companies has changed radically in recent years.
|
| If you throw away your assumptions, and solely look at the
| behaviors that the function exhibits, you will find striking
| resemblance to the behaviors under communism, or fascism.
|
| Money has no value any more. Power is the only currency.
|
| To the public, they are strictly compliant, but the tools, such
| as the CV, the interview process, feedback, approval process,
| and so on, are irrational to anyone involved, except the true
| decision makers.
|
| Their objective is not no longer meritocratic, to hire the best
| qualified or best performing, but to hire people that
| strengthen the political power of those that already wield it.
| It's more than nepotism, it's empire building.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| > Money has no value any more. Power is the only currency.
|
| Money can be exchanged for goods and services.
| sampo wrote:
| > I have written two peer-reviewed papers in a major
| meteorological journal (here)
|
| The blogger is Cliff Mass, a professor at University of
| Washington. He has written two papers _on this specific topic_
| (decline of US weather predictions). In general, as a scientist,
| he has published 100+ papers.
|
| He only linked to his second paper [1]. I also found his first
| paper [2].
|
| [1] "The Uncoordinated Giant II" (2023)
| https://journals.ametsoc.org/downloadpdf/view/journals/bams/...
|
| [2] "The Uncoordinated Giant" (2006)
| https://www.e-education.psu.edu/files/meteo410/image/Lesson3...
| blueelephanttea wrote:
| I don't think the title of the article matches the content. The
| GFS has not declined relative to the ECMWF. It just started from
| a lower skill level and its improvements have not significantly
| closed the gap with ECMWF (as it has also improved).
|
| > Specifically, NOAA's global model, the UFS, is now in third or
| fourth place behind the European Center, the UK Meteorology
| Office, and often the Canadians.
|
| Would love to see evidence of that. It is well established that
| ECMWF is top in the game. I don't think it is reasonable to just
| state that Canada and UK are better without evidence.
|
| With that said, I agree the US should improve.
| marcyb5st wrote:
| When it comes to medium range predictions. If you look at
| nowcasting, I believe the top dog is metnet 3
| (https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.06079).
|
| On a tangential note, I worked on weather forecasting a bit
| before, and talking with some people still in the field it
| seems that these organizations (NOAA, ECMWF) are stuck with NWP
| and refuse to embrace AI models. Not sure if they can't attract
| talent and so are somewhat stuck or if their higher ups are
| "old school" and can't really see the potential that this
| approach has to offer. It is just sad that the private sector
| is outclassing institutions and that these better models won't
| hit the public domain.
| plantain wrote:
| > talking with some people still in the field it seems that
| these organizations (NOAA, ECMWF) are stuck with NWP and
| refuse to embrace AI models This is trivially verifiable as
| not true. ECMWF is all over AI:
|
| https://www.ecmwf.int/en/newsletter/178/news/aifs-new-
| ecmwf-...
|
| https://github.com/ecmwf-lab/ai-models
|
| And they are hiring with competitive salaries (for Europe).
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| If only we'd put forecasting on the blonkchain so we could
| defend against 51% tornadoes
| carabiner wrote:
| Windy.com offers ECMWF-AIFS models to paid subscribers. ECMWF
| seems to be all-in on the ML-based, as opposed to physical,
| NWP, but it's not clear ML approaches are superior.
| blueelephanttea wrote:
| > When it comes to medium range predictions. If you look at
| nowcasting, I believe the top dog is metnet 3
| (https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.06079).
|
| I don't consider 24 hour forecasts "medium range". And I
| don't really view MetNet-3 a competitor to GFS or ECMWF at
| all (currently).
| plantain wrote:
| There is plenty of evidence - UKMO reliably outperforms GFS, as
| does DWD and many other centres.
|
| https://wmolcdnv.ecmwf.int/scores/mean/msl
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| But the forecasting hasn't declined. It's better than it was.
| blueelephanttea wrote:
| I would love to see a multi-year skill plot for all global
| models similar to what is commonly shared for GFS vs. ECMWF.
| Instead of having to parse a bunch of individual month
| comparisons for specific observations.
|
| Regardless, my criticism is towards the evidence presented in
| the article and the framing of the article.
| etiennebausson wrote:
| >> U.S. numerical weather prediction (NWP), which uses computer
| simulation to predict future weather, should be the best in the
| world.
|
| The author makes an important point, on a subject that keep
| getting more important due to climate change, but appeal to blind
| nationalism doesn't work in his favor.
|
| It's not so much a bias a willful blindness at this point. I have
| to tolerate it coming from politicians, but it is a different
| story when the author present himself as a serious scientist.
|
| Yes, the U.S. could be the best at meteorology. they could be the
| best at anything, with their means. But not at everything. The
| U.S. are the best at military spending, and everything else is at
| best in second place.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Well historically the military has quite often been one of the
| primary customers of weather forecasting, so that doesn't
| necessarily mean we couldn't have the best meteorology
| (assuming for the sake of argument that we don't).
| eximius wrote:
| It doesn't seem likely that the military has a private model
| that is dramatically better. If we did, it would likely be
| exposed in a way similar to GPS.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Interesting call for more horsepower behind numerical methods.
| One of the benefits of the emerging machine learning forecast
| models is dramatically lower need for computation (and therefore
| energy).
| counters wrote:
| Sort of.
|
| The motivation here is that numerical weather prediction (NWP)
| models are used for a lot more than just weather forecasting -
| they're critical research infrastructure and tools. NWP allows
| researchers to simulate complex atmospheric flows and phenomena
| which might not be readily or directly observed - or to
| manipulate observed flows in ways to evaluate dynamical theory
| and the underlying physics. You can't really do any of this
| with the AI emulators, which output a tiny, tiny sliver of
| information relative to the vast array of data you can dump
| from an NWP system.
|
| Regarding energy usage, you're right up to a point. Today's ML
| weather models are trained to emulate very large reanalysis
| datasets (e.g., ECMWF's ERA5) which are produced using the
| physics-based models. No one has yet to demonstrate an end-to-
| end AI/ML weather forecast which sidesteps these reanalysis
| datasets (in fact, the trend so far has been to include _more_
| physics-based model datasets for fine-tuning, including
| archives of historical NWP forecasts or GCM simulations). So
| there's a massive sunk cost in energy usage to create those
| training datasets, and then there's the ongoing energy cost of
| training AI emulators from the ground up. And of course,
| there's the future energy cost of running more physics-based
| models to better support the development of AI emulators.
|
| For pure inference/forecasting? Sure. Much faster to run AI
| models and much lower energy usage. But that's quite literally
| the tip of the iceberg when it comes to forecast model
| development.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Sure, the AI stuff is not a complete solution because it
| relies on the results of numerical methods. I was only
| suggesting that in the question of making up the marginal
| difference between the best and fourth-best weather
| predictions, there might be some application of these other
| novel methods.
|
| If the question is can the Americans build a gigantic
| supercomputer and write fortran programs, the answer to that
| seems obvious. Yes we can do that when the relevant
| bureaucracy gets pointed in the right direction.
| amelius wrote:
| Don't forget that ML models are trained on existing data. This
| makes them unsuitable for long-term climate models.
| jeffbee wrote:
| True, but I believe we are discussing forecasts on the scale
| of hours, not decades.
| jordanb wrote:
| > One of the benefits of the emerging machine learning forecast
| models is dramatically lower need for computation (and
| therefore energy).
|
| Maybe but honestly, it doesn't make a ton of sense to me that
| something that is so power hungry it needs new power plants is
| going to _save energy._
|
| I'm also skeptical that AI can really model a chaotic system
| better than a.. chaotic system simulation. AI is a statistical
| pattern matcher. I'm really struggling to understand how that
| would be better at prediction than a simulation of the
| underlying phenomena. The whole thing seems like a solution in
| search of a problem.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > it doesn't make a ton of sense to me that something that is
| so power hungry it needs new power plants is going to save
| energy.
|
| The fact that Sam Altman has a 200MW chatbot is not relevant
| here. For example the GraphCast system from DeepMind runs in
| under 1 minute on a single TPU device.
| throw0101d wrote:
| Somewhat related, but I found Andrew Blum's book _The Weather
| Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast_ an interesting read:
|
| > _In The Weather Machine, Andrew Blum takes readers on a
| fascinating journey through an everyday miracle. In a quest to
| understand how the forecast works, he visits old weather stations
| and watches new satellites blast off. He follows the dogged
| efforts of scientists to create a supercomputer model of the
| atmosphere and traces the surprising history of the algorithms
| that power their work. He discovers that we have quietly entered
| a golden age of meteorology--our tools allow us to predict
| weather more accurately than ever, and yet we haven't learned to
| trust them, nor can we guarantee the fragile international
| alliances that allow our modern weather machine to exist._
|
| * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42079139-the-weather-mac...
|
| * https://www.andrewblum.net/the-weather-machine-2
|
| Also his book _Tubes_ , the Internet's physical infrastructure.
| He also appears to be working on a book on the electrical grid:
|
| * https://www.andrewblum.net/electric-earth
| warner25 wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation.
|
| I read _Tubes_ back in 2012 when it was first published, and I
| enjoyed it. I knew a lot less about networking back then, so it
| would probably be a good book to re-read now with a different
| perspective, and to think about how things have might have
| changed since then.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| Read Tubes last year. Magnificent read. A must read for
| internet users.
| therein wrote:
| Aren't all weather forecasts getting their data from Raytheon
| in the US via Weather Central, LP?
| M_bara wrote:
| Missed a chance to reword that epic as a failure to an epic
| failure
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| As a sailor I'm really into getting a good weather prediction and
| most of the models are quite inaccurate. I learned on here about
| an ML based weather model startup that posted predictions on
| their website called Atmo.AI (edited) that was mind blowingly
| accurate and had incredible spacial resolution- it could
| accurately predict, e.g. the wind shadow behind islands,
| something none of the mainstream weather models even come close
| to doing. I used it everyday and it was almost always dead right
| at predicting wind speeds in almost any specific spot. I won a
| lot of sailboat races with it. I hope this tech gets taken up by
| NOAA, or other major weather predictors.
|
| Anyone on here know what happened to Atmo and if the tech is ever
| going to come back so people can use it? It's a travesty that
| this tech exists but isn't being used- a lot of lives would be
| saved if NOAA were using this already existing technology.
|
| Edit: Apparently as another poster pointed out I had just
| forgotten the correct name of it, and it is still around. I
| edited this to reflect that.
| carabiner wrote:
| Do you mean atmo.ai? Atmos.ai seems to be something very
| different: "Atmos AI streamlines the Carbon Accounting, GHG
| Emissions, and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)
| reporting processes for companies of all shapes and sizes."
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Ok, I am embarrassed, I simply forgot the name of it, and
| thought it had disappeared when I tried to find it again.
| Seems it is still alive and well. I swear this isn't viral
| marketing for them, I was legitimately confused.
|
| I edited my post above to use the correct name, but realize
| it doesn't make too much sense anymore.
| code_biologist wrote:
| How do I use Atmo for locations other than the bay area demo
| linked on their website? I tried URL tweaking without much
| luck. I have a friend who does a lot of sailing races who would
| love this!
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I don't know... I am only using it in the Bay Area. I noticed
| there are coordinates in the URL that one could try changing,
| but it is possible they are only running the model for the
| Bay Area right now?
|
| I've also wondered if they have hand tuned the model to match
| local observations and geography in the Bay Area, and if it
| could generally apply elsewhere without a lot of manual work?
| In particular, it is mind blowingly accurate at getting the
| wind shadow around Angel Island, which is a complex thing to
| do, because it involves ocean wind that divides into at least
| 3 separate streams, and then recombines in complex ways. No
| other model I've seen can predict which of those 3 stream
| will dominate, but they usually can.
|
| I've noticed the same with e.g. car navigation/map software-
| it generally works much better in the Bay Area where the
| developers and companies making them actually live, than
| elsewhere. I could imagine that in both cases the developers
| use it themselves in the place they live, and investigate/fix
| local errors themselves.
| sails wrote:
| I couldn't make much of atmo given the SF constraint, but I
| use the UK2 model for UK forecasts and it seems to be a
| similar level of detail and does very well taking
| topographical and micro weather nuance into account.
| Depending on your location you might find an equivalent short
| range model
| jordanb wrote:
| Weird, as a sailor I find GFS to be _highly accurate_ taking
| into account an understanding of what it does, what it does not
| do, and how to interpret it.
|
| GFS does not account for sea/shore breeze for instance, so if
| you're in an area where that may occur, then you will have to
| apply your own judgement about the conditions.
|
| Now, if you were to feed weather station readings into an ML
| model, would the ML model be better at predicting the weather?
| Well I think it'd be better at predicting the things that the
| weather model _does not model_ in the locality of the weather
| station, sure.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Are you talking about for offshore/open ocean?
|
| I've found GFS fine for that, but it is one of the worst
| models for inland or near shore sailing, even most of the
| other popular models that you can access from sailing weather
| apps like NAM and ECMWF are much more accurate in specific
| locations with unique geography. The resolution is just too
| low to account for any interacting geography with GFS. It
| gives the same forecast over huge areas with radically
| different conditions.
| jordanb wrote:
| I do some offshore but mostly on the great lakes.
|
| I don't use GFS just by looking at the wind layer though.
| Wind layer forecasts do not include terrain or local
| effects as you noted. But the necessary info is in the
| forecast and is accurate.
|
| For instance, in the great lakes we tend to have large
| diurnal temperature swings and therefore strong sea/shore
| breezes. If the model is forecasting big temperature
| changes and an anticyclone with low wind-layer forecast,
| this is ripe for strong sea/shore breezes.
|
| The biggest hazard we have in the great lakes is convective
| storms (squalls). They do not show up in forecasts because
| convective cells are very small. However, The GFS gribs do
| have pressure forecasts, and perception, and most
| importantly CAPE and CIN forecast layers. Combined with WPC
| synaptic charts you have the info needed to determine if 1)
| convective storms are likely to occur and 2) if they do
| occur, the probability that they will be severe.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Thanks, I think I need to spend some more time studying
| meteorology so I can also better interpret how the data
| predicts actual hazards, as you are doing. I'm not even
| familiar with many of the acronyms you mention. I am
| simply comparing how well the predicted wind speeds are
| reflected in real life, in specific places where I am
| potentially in the wind shadow of relatively small hills,
| islands, etc. It is the flow around these objects that
| requires a high resolution model, as small shifts in wind
| direction make the wind shadows shift and change in size
| a lot. The actual overall prevailing conditions are so
| identical here from day to day in Northern California,
| there is hardly a need for large scale models unless the
| rare storm comes through.
|
| I have noticed that where I am, the inland/offshore
| temperature differential is alone a pretty good predictor
| of overall wind speeds near the coast, not accounting for
| geography.
| counters wrote:
| Many companies offer customized, high resolution weather
| simulations that resolve those sorts of features. It's purely a
| cost vs value proposition - only a tiny sliver of users
| actually need this sort of spatial resolution, and typically
| over a very small area, so there is no reason for a global
| weather forecast model to be cranked up to it.
|
| > Anyone on here know what happened to Atmo and if the tech is
| ever going to come back so people can use it? It's a travesty
| that this tech exists but isn't being used- a lot of lives
| would be saved if NOAA were using this already existing
| technology.
|
| They're a thriving start-up as far as I've heard. Weather is a
| tough industry. Given that hourly-refreshing, high-resolution
| forecasts are freely available already from NOAA, I doubt that
| proprietary forecasts like these really move the needle in
| terms of protecting public life / property.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes for the vast majority, the immediate weather conditions
| can be ascertained by looking out the window.
|
| I'd like more accuracy for the next 1-5 days as that's the
| time horizion I tend to use to plan to work outside on
| various projects, and am often frustrated by rain when the
| prior day's forecast didn't anticipate any. Or the opposite.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| For sailboat racing I care about "micrometeorology" - e.g.
| things like which of two slightly different courses only
| 1/10th of a mile apart to the same destination will be
| windier 45 minutes from now?
|
| Amazingly, these models are starting to be able to actually
| predict that, but I agree that not a lot of people care about
| that level of detail.
| jwr wrote:
| As a European, I can tell you not to worry too much. The EU
| forecasts are mostly garbage. For some reason (possibly climate
| change) weather forecasting became unreliable over the last 10-15
| years.
|
| I regularly check 5 different forecasting models (through a
| subscription in the Windy app and elsewhere) and they are unable
| to agree on whether water will fall on my head later today. We're
| not talking long-range forecasting here, just tell me if it's
| going to rain in several hours or not. There is no forecasting
| model that gets this right.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| The article leaves out that members of one political party have
| proposed eliminating the NOAA entirely
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/07/22/project-20...
| yogurtboy wrote:
| Lol I shouldn't have clicked on that link, that shit really
| makes my blood boil.
|
| I don't think most people realize how much free value they get
| out of NOAA weather predictions.
| nickff wrote:
| While I'd agree that accurate weather forecasts provide
| tremendous value, it's not "free value", as tax dollars are
| paying for it. That money could go to any number of 'under-
| funded' other causes, or be returned to the tax-payers.
| aegypti wrote:
| A relief to know NOAA isn't doing this pro bono, I was
| beginning to wonder whether they were simply donating
| forecasts.
| CapeTheory wrote:
| Don't worry, UK Met Office are currently shitting the bed on a
| migration from on-prem HPC to Azure (3+ years late at this point
| I believe?) so the competition isn't exactly hot.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _Specifically, NOAA 's global model, the UFS, is now in third or
| fourth place behind the European Center, the UK Meteorology
| Office, and often the Canadians._
|
| So there's been no decline. In fact US weather prediction is
| getting better (by the article own chart). It's just The author
| is upset the US isn't moving ahead as quickly as other weather
| services. Maybe they should be upset by this but the way it's
| framed seems a bit dishonest.
| looping__lui wrote:
| One of the fee startups I am genuinely impressed: skysight.
|
| https://magazine.weglide.org/skysight-interview-matthew-scut...
|
| Freakingly accurate weather forecasts for the niche sport of
| gliding. Builds on top of ECMWF and incorporates refined soil
| moisture. It's really good in predicting mountain waves (and used
| by Perlan: https://perlanproject.org/perlans-sponsors-enable-us-
| to-fly-... ). Also convergences and thermal activity which is
| very dynamic...
|
| Incredibly impressive.
| timthorn wrote:
| > Our nation invented the technology...
|
| Lewis Fry Richardson might have something to say about that.
| GarnetFloride wrote:
| I am an amateur radio operator and looking into the history of
| it, you quickly run into the telegraph, and telegraph operators
| would talk about things like the weather. It didn't take long
| before they realized that the weather in a place 100 miles away
| could show up the next day. Then they would warn everyone around
| them if bad weather was coming.
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