Table of Contents

Guiding signs; Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. Weather and prediction by numerical process; 2. The fundamental equations; 3. The oscillations of the atmosphere; 4. The barotropic forecast; 5. The solution algorithm; 6. Observations and inital fields; 7. Richardson's forecast; 8. Balance and initialization; 9. Smoothing the forecast; 10. The ENIAC integrations; 11. Numerical weather prediction today; 12. Fulfilment of the dream; Appendix 1. Table of notation; Appendix 2. Milestones in Richardson's life and career; Appendix 3. Laplace tidal equations: separation of variables; Appendix 4. Richardson's forecast-factory: the $64,000 question; References; Index.

Promotional Information

This book, first published in 2006, is a history of weather forecasting for researchers, graduate students and professionals in numerical weather forecasting.

About the Author

Peter Lynch is Met Éireann Professor of Meteorology at the University College Dublin and Director of the UCD Meteorology and Climate Centre. Prior to this he was Deputy Director of Met Éireann, the Irish Meteorological Service. He is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, the Royal Astronomical Society, the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and the Institute of Physics.

Reviews

'A wonderful study of the scientific history which also forms a very educational lesson in numerical weather forecasting.' Translated from La Météorologie

'He's an expert on initialization and has repeated and extended Richardson's original computations, including his barotropic forecast, and those done by von Neumann and Charney on the ENIAC at Aberdeen, Maryland in 1950. … This well-written history clearly displays the success and practical importance of applied mathematics. Thanks, Peter, for demonstrating that the swinging spring isn't just for fun.' SIAM Review