Project Meteorologist Dmitry Smirnov explains weather models in less than 90 seconds.
www.dewberry.com
Transcript:
Hi, I'm Dr. Dmitry Smirnov, a meteorologist at Dewberry's Hydrometeorology and Technology Group. Our groups' projects span a variety of topics from preparing today's flood forecast to helping airports plan for climate change, but regardless of the project, one tool common to them all is the weather model. Weather models, as we know them today, have been around since about 1950. Of course, at that time, a state-of-the-art weather model approximated the entire world by only 1,000 grid points. To put that into perspective, such a model would not have been able to resolve the difference in weather between, for example, New York City and Washington, D.C. But fast forward to today. The latest weather models contain about 10-million grid points, which is one of the main reasons why todays' forecasts are accurate up to five days or even longer.
So how does a weather model work? Well, it's a process involving several steps. First, the initial 3-D state of the atmosphere is analyzed, including temperature, moisture, and wind fields. Next, this information is transformed onto a model grid, and finally, the weather model itself, which is comprised of hundreds or even thousands of physical equations and approximations, is simulated forward one time step at a time. Now ultimately, we use the weather model forecast combined with our own expertise to help clients solve a variety of weather-related topics.