The Forecast Problem
Hurd C. Willett · American Meteorological Society eBooks · 1951
The Unsatisfactory Progress of Weather Forecasting as a Science . Probably there is no other field of applied science in which so much money has been spent to effect so little real progress as in weather forecasting. Today the nations of the world spend many times what they did forty years ago to obtain the necessary observational data and to prepare weather forecasts. But the advance in weather-forecasting skill has not kept pace with the increased effort and attention devoted to forecasting. The variety of weather forecasts, as to time range and detail, as to the elements forecast, and as to the elevations and geographical areas for which forecasts are prepared, has been greatly increased in proportion to the increase in the observational synoptic data, to meet more exacting demands. Much has been done to meet these demands by the development of special types of forecasts, frequently forecasts of elements which were not even observed forty years ago. But in spite of all this great expansion of forecasting activity, there has been little or no real progress made during the past forty years in the verification skill of the original basic type of regional forecast, of rain or shine and of warmer or colder on the morrow, the kind of forecasting which first received attention. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.