Computers and

Weather forecasting

Weather forecasting
 Menu
Explanation Weather station
Radiosonde
Overview picture
Satellites
Data collection
Radar
Sensors Weather ships

Supercomputers
Data logging
Parallel Processing
The Grid System
Software

Pressing Weather forecasting on any slide

will bring you back to this menu
Weather forecasting
 During the last two decades the Met Office has
used state-of-the-art supercomputers
for numerical weather prediction and more
recently, also for predictions of global climate.

This is a picture of a supercomputer

Weather forecasting
 Weather forecasters are helped by
several things. These include:-
1. The computer’s advice
2. Information from radar
3. Information from satellite pictures

The computer makes millions of calculations.

The sums are called differential equations
Before the computer can do the calculations,
data has to be collected first.

Weather forecasting
 Collecting data on the weather is very important.

Without the data, the computer could not do

the calculations that enable it to
make weather predictions.

The next slide shows where the data comes from.

It also shows where the forecasts are sent.

Always remember that the forecasters are highly
trained people and they use their judgement
and expertise to make their forecast
based on the information the computer
gives them and the information from the radar
and the satellite pictures.

Weather forecasting
 Radio-sonde Satellites

Weather
stations

Radar

Weather ship Supercomputer

and weather buoys

Weather forecasting
 Radio-sonde Satellites

Weather
stations

Radar

Weather ship Supercomputer

and weather buoys

Aviation
Forecaster

National and International

Shipping
Global forecast services Forecast Services up to
Weather forecasting 7 days ahead.
 Radio-sonde Satellites

Weather
stations

Radar

Weather ship Supercomputer

and weather buoys

Aviation
Forecaster

National and International

Shipping
Global forecast services Forecast Services up to
Weather forecasting 7 days ahead.
 Data is collected continuously for the
computer from the following:-
1. Weather stations
2. Automated weather
stations
3. Satellites
4. Radar
5. Radiosondes
6. Weather ships
7. Mini-radiosondes
8. Radar
9. Aeroplanes
10. Drifting buoys

Weather forecasting
 The data measurements are made by sensors

A sensor is a transducer which responds to

some physical property such as pressure,
temperature, rate of flow.

A transducer is an electronic component

which converts energy from one form to another.

We want the transducers to send signals to

the computer in the Met. Office.

Weather forecasting
 The measurements needed include:-

1. Temperature .. Air, surface and subsurface temp.

2. Atmospheric Pressure

3. Wind speed

4. Wind direction

5. Humidity

6. Rainfall

7. Sunshine

Weather forecasting
 These are some of the sensors used to collect data.

Weather forecasting
 Data logging is the capture and
storage of data for future use.
All the measurements from the sensors are
stored because:-

• The computer processes the data in batches

• People need to refer back to weather data for

many reasons
So data logging is used in weather forecasting.

Weather forecasting
 The next slides explain more about data
collection.

To jump to the details of the computers, click

on the computer.

Weather forecasting
 Radiation from the sun

Formation of
rain and
snow

Formation of
clouds
Radiation from
the atmosphere

Mountain
Evaporation and effects

heat exchange Friction

Radiation from
the earth

Sea
The atmosphere is split up into a 3-D grid.
Each land based grid is about 60km.
Weather forecasting
 The vertical grid you just saw only had 5 levels.

The Met Office uses far more, some computer

models work on 40 vertical levels.

For the global forecasts the horizontal grid is 60km

For UK forecasts the

horizontal grid is 15km.

Weather forecasting
 We need to measure pressure,
temperature,
wind speed and wind directions as well
as rainfall, cloud cover,etc in as many
grid spaces as possible

Sea

Weather forecasting
 Sea

Weather stations are used here.

Weather forecasting
 A weather station sends signals back to the Met
Office computer.
The instruments measure
pressure, temperature and
humidity.

Some weather stations are

automated. These send
their measurements back to
the computerdirectly.

Picture thanks to Sparholt school who have a great web site

www.hants.gov.uk/sparsholtschoolscentre

Weather forecasting
 We need to measure pressure, temperature,
wind speed and wind directions as well as
rainfall, cloud cover,etc
Radiosondes
are used up
here.

20 km

Sea

her
 A radiosonde sends signals back
to the Met Office computer.
They are attached to a balloon
carrying instruments.

The instruments measure pressure,

temperature and humidity.

By measuring the track of the radiosonde,

the wind direction and speed can be
calculated.
Photo courtesy of the British Atmospheric Data Centre

Weather forecasting
UTC =
Universal Time
Co-ordinated

All over the world, radiosondes are released

at midday and midnight UTC.
Weather forecasting
 UTC = Universal Time Co-ordinated UTC is also known as GMT
Greenwich Mean Time

Baghdad
Atlantic 3 pm
Hawaii 2 am Daylight
9 am

West Australian
Standard 7 pm
Here are some of the times when the radiosondes
are released to correspond with the ones in Britain at midday.
Weather forecasting
 We need to measure pressure, temperature,
wind speed and wind directions as well as
rainfall, cloud cover,etc

Minisondes
are used 5 km
here.

Sea
Everest is 8.85 Kms high.
So we have shown you a very high mountain!
Weather
 A minisonde
system takes
measurements
at 5Km above
sea level.

Both radiosondes and minisondes

use radio waves to transmit the
data readings to the computers
Weather forecasting
 We need to measure pressure, temperature,
wind speed and wind directions as well as
rainfall, cloud cover,etc

Aeroplanes
send data
too.
10 km

Sea

Weather forecasting
 We need to measure pressure, temperature,
wind speed and wind directions as well as
rainfall, cloud cover,etc

36,000km

Satellites
send data
too.

Sea
The Geostationary satellites are
36,000 Km above earth.
Weather forecasting
 There are two types of satellites.

• Geostationary. These stay in the same spot.

They orbit the earth at exactly the same speed as
the earth rotates. They are very high above earth -

36,000 km.
5 geostationary satellites are enough to give
global coverage.

• Polar orbiting. These orbit the earth about 14

times a day. They orbit at 1000 km above the
earth.

Weather forecasting
 A Geostationary
satellite stays in the
same place with
respect to earth all
the time

A Polar orbiting satellite moves

above the earth’s surface
Weather forecasting
 Picture courtesy of the European Organisation
for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites
and photo courtesy of Dundee University.

The satellite’s signals are received by

antennae.

©Eumetsat 2003

Meteosat: a
geostationary
satellite. It sends
microwave signals
back to earth.

The URL ( Uniform Resource Locator )

www.sat.dundee.ac.uk/tour.html will tell you
more about satellites if you are interested
Weather forecasting
 This is a Polar Orbiting Satellite

The satellite can take readings across the entire

earth during the course of one day.

Weather forecasting
 Radar stands for radio detection and ranging.
Radio waves are transmitted, when they hit a
rain cloud they bounce back to earth and
measurements can be taken.

Sea

Radar systems are used here.

Weather forecasting
 Radar measurements let the forecaster and the
computer know if the radar has seen rain clouds.

This is a
radar
station.

The computer and the

forecaster receive data from There is a network of
the radar systems. radar systems
covering Britain.
Weather forecasting
 There are also buoys taking weather
measurements in the sea

Sea

There are weather ships out to sea

Weather
 This is a Weather ship.

Thanks to www.gdfcartophily.co.uk

Buoys are used at sea

more than weather
ships these days.
They send their data
automatically back to
the computer.

Weather
 The Meteorological Office uses supercomputers.
These are the largest computers in the world.

The Met Office has re-located (moved) to Exeter

from Bracknell.
Bracknell is near London.
Exeter is in the South West
of England.

There will be a new

supercomputer
in the Met Office’s new
location at Exeter.
• Bracknell
• Exeter

Weather forecasting
 A supercomputer is a very large computer, which
works very, very fast. It is about 1000 times more
powerful than a PC.

It also has an enormous

store (memory).

We store Gigabytes (one thousand million bytes 109)

of data on the Hard drives in our school.
Supercomputers have stores for Terabytes of data.

A Terabyte is
one million, million bytes, 1012 bytes.

Weather forecasting
 A supercomputer is a very large computer, which
works very, very fast. It is about 1000 times more
powerful than a PC

It usually has many

processors working in
parallel to achieve the
fast processing time.

The Met Office supercomputers are

Massively Parallel Processor machines.

Weather forecasting
 Massively Parallel Processor machines use Parallel
processing

Parallel processing is the simultaneous use of

several processors to perform a single job.
A job may be split into a number of tasks each
of which may be processed by any available
processor.

Weather forecasting
 When a computer uses
several processors in parallel
it is known as
parallel processing.

Parallel processing splits jobs up and gives

different processors tasks. These all have to be
brought together.

Parallel processing is difficult to program

Weather forecasting
 How does parallel processing work?
.

A B C D
1*7 2*7 3*7 4*7

Let’s give four processors A, B, C, D a sum each

7 14 21 28

Weather forecasting
 If processor A did all four sums it would
take longer.

Parallel processing is very complicated

to program but it does make it faster
to do loads and loads of sums.

Weather forecasting
 Massively Parallel Processor machines.

MPP systems rely on very high bandwidth

communications to move data between memory
and between different processors
so that they are all kept busy during program
execution.

MPP systems use a distributed hierarchy of memory.

This just means that they have to have a system of
accessing the memory available.

Weather forecasting
 Software consists of programs, routines and
procedures which can be run on a computer
system.

There are two types of software,

• application
• system

Weather forecasting
 Application software is designed to carry out a task
(such as keeping accounts, or editing text) which
would need to be done even if computers didn’t
exist.

System software is designed to control the

operation of a computer. An operating system is
an example of systems software.

An operating system is the software that controls

the overall running of the computer.

Operating systems handle the Input/Output

operations, interrupts, user requests.

Weather forecasting
 Application software in Weather Forecasting.

The Met Office calls their application software

they use for weather forecasting the Unified
Model.

It is modelling software.

The Unified model is run both for climate

and operational weather forecasting. It uses
a lot of computer time, even on the very
latest supercomputers.

Weather forecasting
 Systems software in Weather Forecasting

The computers at the Met Office use an

operating system called Unicos/mk.

Unicos/mk is an interactive system that can

run batch work. It is based on UNIX, a very
reliable network operating system.

Weather forecasting
 The weather forecasts are run in batch mode.

Batch mode is when all the jobs or data to be

processed are put together for processing and
then run together.

The batches are done by a piece of software

produced by the same company CRAY that
makes the computers. It is known as the NQS,
the Network Queueing System.

Weather forecasting
 I would like to thank the Met Office for
all their help and for permission to use
their photographs throughout this
presentation.

Copyright Helen ap Derwen Yewlett

Weather forecasting