Slashdot Mirror
The Pioneer Who Invented the Weather Forecast
HughPickens.com writes: Peter Moore has a fascinating article on BBC about how Admiral Robert FitzRoy, the man who invented the weather forecast in the 1860s faced skepticism and even mockery in his time but whose vision of a public forecasting service, funded by government for the benefit of all, is fundamental to our way of life. Chiefly remembered today as Charles Darwin's taciturn captain on HMS Beagle, during the famous circumnavigation in the 1830s, in his lifetime FitzRoy found celebrity from his pioneering daily weather predictions, which he called by a new name of his own invention — "forecasts". There was no such thing as a weather forecast in 1854 when FitzRoy established what would later be called the Met Office. With no forecasts, fishermen, farmers and others who worked in the open had to rely on weather wisdom — the appearance of clouds or the behavior of animals — to tell them what was coming as the belief persisted among many that weather was completely chaotic. But FitzRoy was troubled by the massive loss of life at sea around the coasts of Victorian Britain where from 1855 to 1860, 7,402 ships were wrecked off the coasts with a total of 7,201 lost lives. With the telegraph network expanding quickly, FitzRoy was able to start gathering real-time weather data from the coasts at his London office. If he thought a storm was imminent, he could telegraph a port where a drum was raised in the harbor. It was, he said, "a race to warn the outpost before the gale reaches them".
For FitzRoy the forecasts were a by-product of his storm warnings. As he was analyzing atmospheric data anyway, he reasoned that he might as well forward his conclusions — fine, fair, rainy or stormy — on to the newspapers for publication. "Prophecies and predictions they are not," he wrote, "the term forecast is strictly applicable to such an opinion as is the result of scientific combination and calculation." The forecasts soon became a quirk of this brave new Victorian society. FitzRoy's forecasts had a particular appeal for the horseracing classes who used the predictions to help them pick their outfits or lay their bets.
But FitzRoy soon faced serious difficulties. Some politicians complained about the cost of the telegraphing back and forth. The response to FitzRoy's work was the beginning of an attitude that we reserve for our weather forecasters today. The papers enjoyed nothing more than conflating the role of the forecaster with that of God and the scientific community were skeptical of his methods. While the majority of fishermen were supportive, others begrudged a day's lost catch to a mistaken signal. FitzRoy retired from his west London home to Norwood, south of the capital, for a period of rest but he struggled to recover and on 30 April 1865 FitzRoy cut his throat at his residence, Lyndhurst-house, Norwood, on Sunday morning. "In time, the revolutionary nature of FitzRoy's work would be recognised," says Moore. "FitzRoy's vision of a weather-prediction service funded by government for the benefit of its citizens would not die. In 1871, the United States would start issuing its own weather "probabilities", and by the end of the decade what was now being called the Met Office would resume its own forecasts in Britain."
For FitzRoy the forecasts were a by-product of his storm warnings. As he was analyzing atmospheric data anyway, he reasoned that he might as well forward his conclusions — fine, fair, rainy or stormy — on to the newspapers for publication. "Prophecies and predictions they are not," he wrote, "the term forecast is strictly applicable to such an opinion as is the result of scientific combination and calculation." The forecasts soon became a quirk of this brave new Victorian society. FitzRoy's forecasts had a particular appeal for the horseracing classes who used the predictions to help them pick their outfits or lay their bets.
But FitzRoy soon faced serious difficulties. Some politicians complained about the cost of the telegraphing back and forth. The response to FitzRoy's work was the beginning of an attitude that we reserve for our weather forecasters today. The papers enjoyed nothing more than conflating the role of the forecaster with that of God and the scientific community were skeptical of his methods. While the majority of fishermen were supportive, others begrudged a day's lost catch to a mistaken signal. FitzRoy retired from his west London home to Norwood, south of the capital, for a period of rest but he struggled to recover and on 30 April 1865 FitzRoy cut his throat at his residence, Lyndhurst-house, Norwood, on Sunday morning. "In time, the revolutionary nature of FitzRoy's work would be recognised," says Moore. "FitzRoy's vision of a weather-prediction service funded by government for the benefit of its citizens would not die. In 1871, the United States would start issuing its own weather "probabilities", and by the end of the decade what was now being called the Met Office would resume its own forecasts in Britain."
Hulloooo!
(and so is Michael Fish)
that's a category Ewww!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econophysics
I'm fairly interested in High Performance Computing so I started reading up on Weather Forecasting when the idea hit me to use these methodologies to predict social diffusion of product adoption. Vector Fields seemed easiest, and I had a background in dense optical flow so that seemed like a good approach.
I eventually settled on Navier Stokes approaches using WebGL.
Example:
http://www.esimov.com/2014/01/navier-stokes-fluid-simulation-on-html5-canvas#.VUTFnSHBzGc
http://29a.ch/sandbox/2012/fluidwebgl/
I got as far as thinking about how to quantify communications barriers as 3d topography when I got distracted and lost interest. Someday I might want to return to the project though... It seems like a good application for machine learning once the feature vectors have been defined.
Also from the BBC: China says no to amateur weathermen: "You may not be able to control the weather - but you can control the forecasts.".
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Just like modern weather forecasters. I doubt weather forecasting is any more accurate today than it was back then.
Hell the met office assured me it'd rain all day today so yesterday, straight out of work, i busted my ass mowing the lawn and, of course, no rain today.
I might just go back to using the ol' weather stone.
To be fair, there is usually a great deal of noise to sift through in any given period.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It seems you predicted correctly. You might have a future as a TV Weather Man, or even as a Business Technology Analyst!
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I predict on Sunday, 100% chance your girl is gonna be hot and wet once she sees me. And on Monday 90% chance she's gonna be cold and dry because I've left and you can't please her.
I saw this like a week ago on the Been.
Slashdot, get with the modern times. We don't want to read yesterday's news.
"The gummint has no business being in the weather business!"
"But!" I says.
"None of those buts", says he, it's not only socialism, but a duplication of effort" - The Government should get their weather maps and satellite imagery just like we do - from The Weather Channel or Accuweather!"
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
He quickly became very unpopular with settlers due to trying to be fair to the Maori. In one notable occasion some colonists invaded Maori land in an attempt to seize it and got massacred. (They were a poorly armed militia and on the other side was Te Rauparaha, who was so scary that to this day his haka is used by the All Blacks to intimidate their opposition.) After an investigation, Fitzroy sided with the Maori.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
I predict this will be modded down.
Yes, you are probably right (if other slashdoter's don't try to ridicule me by modding you up!), but you don't impress me - i am a Greek, and my ancestors believed that it is easy to predict the future if you know the past (as Apollo, the Greek God of prophecies advised).
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
Unfortunately, weather forecasts are no more accurate today than they were when FitzRoy invented them.
Mostly dry, apart from where it's wet. There will be abundant sunshine except in places where it is cloudy, overcast, or foggy. Calm, settled conditions will persist other than where it is stormy or unsettled. Temperatures can be expected to be above normal for this time of year with widespread heat-waves, but much lower and below zero in some localities.
'Nuff said.
You are the water in a leaky bathtub and I claim my £5.
I have this idea I would like to patent. It involves using current conditional data and historical trend models to predict what meteorological conditions may be present in various geographical areas at some future point. I would like to call it "forecasting" and I would like nobody but me to be able to do this because nobody has ever done this before.
He was caricatured because he strongly disagreed with Darwin on evolution and was portrayed as a bible thumper. But Darwin owes much to his old Captain for long chats over the voyages and the extra mile he went to accommodate Darwin, who was a bit of a spoiled son of a rich indulgent father at that time. Darwin had quit college, quit the seminary when he got on Beagle. Darwin was quite sick later in life. Darwin had spent 1000 pounds during the voyage to collect the specimens, probably worth quarter of a million dollars today. There was nothing to stop Darwin from calling it quits and catching a ship home at any port of call. It is entirely due to Fitzroy's help and understanding Darwin stayed on board for the entire 5 years.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm pretty sure Noah invented the weather forecast. And the litter box.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm surprised the patent trolls haven't gotten a patent on weather forecasts yet.
But they were always right before when they said:
The weather will be better or worse or it will stay as it is.
The groundhog had it first!
Hmmm, I think I'll have an apple...