4 ms·

From the top of the about page (http://pressurenet.io/about/ http://pressurenet.io/about/) -- "Our mission is to dramatically improve weather and climate foreca

by mturmon 12y ago

From the top of the about page (http://pressurenet.io/about/ http://pressurenet.io/about/) -- "Our mission is to dramatically improve weather and climate forecasting." How does this have to do with climate? It seems like your time scale doesn't overlap with typical climate models. I guess it feels like a speculative claim (better pressure measurements -> fine-grained model improvements at small temporal scales -> better climate model outcomes). Also, I wonder if you have a link to a paper or presentation that details how these measurements could fit in with the assimilation models that are used in weather forecasting? I see a link to Cliff Mass' blog (as a whole), but I'm more interested in a specific reference. In particular, I wonder if it's possible to quantify how much a perfectly-accurate ground-level pressure field could constrain upper atmosphere dynamics. Has there been a session at AGU (http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2014/ http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2014/), for example, examining how this could work? Or is it too new for this yet?

cryptoz 12y ago
Excellent questions. Regarding climate: there are many indications that measurements of atmospheric pressure are useful in forecasting longer-range trends. For example, the pressure over the Tibetan plateau can have a large affect on El Niño. Additionally, we've collected atmosphere data over a period of years, and we expect to find interesting climactic trends as well as shorter-term weather trends. Here's a paper by Cliff and Luke regarding dense surface-level pressure observations: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-13-00269.1?af=R http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-13-00269.1... > I wonder if it's possible to quantify how much a perfectly-accurate ground-level pressure field could constrain upper atmosphere dynamics Yes it is possible and we're working on this currently. There are some neat math techniques that we can use to estimate what kind of forecast accuracy increase we'll get with a dense network - but the only way to actually know is to scale up and start running experiments to find all the thresholds for improvements and diminishing returns.
- mturmon 12y ago
  Thanks for the MWR reference. It's really great you've got people within that community so interested. "...we've collected atmosphere data over a period of years, and we expect to find interesting climactic trends..." Hmm, multi-year-scale trends in pressure data, as seen through a temporally-evolving sensor network subject to many kinds of extraneous variations (hardware changes, spatial sampling changes)? Color me skeptical on that one. But that's typical HN "yes, but" skepticism. What you're doing sounds great and the case for weather is clear. Best wishes!

by mturmon 12y ago

cryptoz 12y ago

Excellent questions. Regarding climate: there are many indications that measurements of atmospheric pressure are useful in forecasting longer-range trends. For example, the pressure over the Tibetan plateau can have a large affect on El Niño. Additionally, we've collected atmosphere data over a period of years, and we expect to find interesting climactic trends as well as shorter-term weather trends. Here's a paper by Cliff and Luke regarding dense surface-level pressure observations: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-13-00269.1?af=R http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/MWR-D-13-00269.1... > I wonder if it's possible to quantify how much a perfectly-accurate ground-level pressure field could constrain upper atmosphere dynamics Yes it is possible and we're working on this currently. There are some neat math techniques that we can use to estimate what kind of forecast accuracy increase we'll get with a dense network - but the only way to actually know is to scale up and start running experiments to find all the thresholds for improvements and diminishing returns.

mturmon 12y ago
Thanks for the MWR reference. It's really great you've got people within that community so interested. "...we've collected atmosphere data over a period of years, and we expect to find interesting climactic trends..." Hmm, multi-year-scale trends in pressure data, as seen through a temporally-evolving sensor network subject to many kinds of extraneous variations (hardware changes, spatial sampling changes)? Color me skeptical on that one. But that's typical HN "yes, but" skepticism. What you're doing sounds great and the case for weather is clear. Best wishes!