Calculating the Weather: Meteorology in the 20th Century

Frederik Nebeker (Eds.)0-12-515175-6, 9780125151757

During the course of this century, meteorology has become unified, physics-based, and highly computational. Calculating the Weather: Meteorology in the 20th Century explains this transformation by examining thevarious roles of computation throughout the history of meteorology, giving most attention to the period from World War I to the 1960s. The electronic digital computer, a product of World War II, led to great advances in empirical, theoretical, and practical meteorology. At the same time, the use of the computer led to the discovery of so-called”chaotic systems,”and to the recognition that there may well be fundamental limits to predicting the weather.One of the very few books covering 20th century meteorology, this text is an excellent supplement to any course in general meteorology, forecasting, or history of science.

---

Table of contents :
Content:
Chapter 1 Introduction
Pages 1-7

Chapter 2 An empirical tradition: Climatology
Pages 11-26

Chapter 3 A theoretical tradition: Physics of the atmosphere
Pages 27-35

Chapter 4 A practical tradition: Weather forecasting
Pages 36-44

Chapter 5 Vilhelm Bjerknes’s program to unify meteorology
Pages 47-57

Chapter 6 Lewis Fry Richardson: The first person to compute the weather
Pages 58-82

Chapter 7 The growth of meteorology
Pages 83-90

Chapter 8 Meteorological calculation in the interwar period
Pages 91-110

Chapter 9 The effect of world war II on meteorology
Pages 111-132

Chapter 10 John von Neumann’s meteorology project
Pages 135-151

Chapter 11 The acceptance of numerical meteorology
Pages 152-172

Chapter 12 The unification of meteorology
Pages 173-187

Chapter 13 The recognition of limits to weather prediction
Pages 188-194

Notes
Pages 195-223

Note on sources
Pages 225-226

References
Pages 227-241

Index
Pages 243-251