Invisible in the Storm: The Role of Mathematics in Understanding Weather - Hardcover

Roulstone, Ian; Norbury, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691152721 ISBN 13: 9780691152721

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

An accessible book that examines the mathematics of weather prediction

Invisible in the Storm is the first book to recount the history, personalities, and ideas behind one of the greatest scientific successes of modern times—the use of mathematics in weather prediction. Although humans have tried to forecast weather for millennia, mathematical principles were used in meteorology only after the turn of the twentieth century. From the first proposal for using mathematics to predict weather, to the supercomputers that now process meteorological information gathered from satellites and weather stations, Ian Roulstone and John Norbury narrate the groundbreaking evolution of modern forecasting.

The authors begin with Vilhelm Bjerknes, a Norwegian physicist and meteorologist who in 1904 came up with a method now known as numerical weather prediction. Although his proposed calculations could not be implemented without computers, his early attempts, along with those of Lewis Fry Richardson, marked a turning point in atmospheric science. Roulstone and Norbury describe the discovery of chaos theory's butterfly effect, in which tiny variations in initial conditions produce large variations in the long-term behavior of a system—dashing the hopes of perfect predictability for weather patterns. They explore how weather forecasters today formulate their ideas through state-of-the-art mathematics, taking into account limitations to predictability. Millions of variables—known, unknown, and approximate—as well as billions of calculations, are involved in every forecast, producing informative and fascinating modern computer simulations of the Earth system.

Accessible and timely, Invisible in the Storm explains the crucial role of mathematics in understanding the ever-changing weather.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ian Roulstone is professor of mathematics at the University of Surrey. John Norbury is a fellow in applied mathematics at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. They are the coeditors of Large-Scale Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics.

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"With illuminating descriptions and minimal technicality, Invisible in the Storm provides a vivid historical perspective on how the development of mathematical ideas, together with modern computer technology, has completely transformed our ability to understand and predict the weather. This is a gripping and highly informative book."--Roger Penrose, author ofCycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe

"As a TV weather forecaster for over forty years, I have always maintained that meteorology depends on mathematics for meaning. Making this conclusive point,Invisible in the Storm takes readers on an intriguing journey through the history of meteorology, revealing the critical role of mathematics from the earliest days of weather predicting to the current age of computer-generated forecasts. This book guides you inside the storm, where math's importance is clearly visible."--Spencer Christian, chief weather forecaster at ABC-7 News/KGO-TV, San Francisco

"This is a very readable account of why it is possible to forecast the weather with useful accuracy. Focusing on historical background, this well-researched and scientifically accurate book shows how the work of some of the greatest scientists of the past laid the foundations exploited in modern weather forecasting. I am not aware of any other book that covers this ground for a general scientific audience."--M. J. P. Cullen, author ofA Mathematical Theory of Large-Scale Atmosphere/Ocean Flow

"The tremendous improvement in weather prediction capabilities during the twentieth century is among the greatest success stories of the scientific approach to the understanding of nature. Combining a historical account with a qualitative/geometric approach, this enjoyable book makes that story accessible to a wider scientifically educated audience."--Sebastian Reich, University of Potsdam

Aus dem Klappentext

"With illuminating descriptions and minimal technicality, Invisible in the Storm provides a vivid historical perspective on how the development of mathematical ideas, together with modern computer technology, has completely transformed our ability to understand and predict the weather. This is a gripping and highly informative book."--Roger Penrose, author ofCycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe

"As a TV weather forecaster for over forty years, I have always maintained that meteorology depends on mathematics for meaning. Making this conclusive point,Invisible in the Storm takes readers on an intriguing journey through the history of meteorology, revealing the critical role of mathematics from the earliest days of weather predicting to the current age of computer-generated forecasts. This book guides you inside the storm, where math's importance is clearly visible."--Spencer Christian, chief weather forecaster at ABC-7 News/KGO-TV, San Francisco

"This is a very readable account of why it is possible to forecast the weather with useful accuracy. Focusing on historical background, this well-researched and scientifically accurate book shows how the work of some of the greatest scientists of the past laid the foundations exploited in modern weather forecasting. I am not aware of any other book that covers this ground for a general scientific audience."--M. J. P. Cullen, author ofA Mathematical Theory of Large-Scale Atmosphere/Ocean Flow

"The tremendous improvement in weather prediction capabilities during the twentieth century is among the greatest success stories of the scientific approach to the understanding of nature. Combining a historical account with a qualitative/geometric approach, this enjoyable book makes that story accessible to a wider scientifically educated audience."--Sebastian Reich, University of Potsdam

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INVISIBLE IN THE STORM

THE ROLE OF MATHEMATICS IN UNDERSTANDING WEATHERBy IAN ROULSTONE JOHN NORBURY

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2013 Princeton University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-15272-1

Contents

Preface........................................................viiPrelude: New Beginnings........................................1ONE The Fabric of a Vision....................................3TWO From Lore to Laws.........................................47THREE Advances and Adversity..................................89FOUR When the Wind Blows the Wind.............................125Interlude: A Gordian Knot......................................149FIVE Constraining the Possibilities...........................153SIX The Metamorphosis of Meteorology..........................187Color Insert follows...........................................page 230SEVEN Math Gets the Picture...................................231EIGHT Predicting in the Presence of chaos.....................271Postlude: Beyond the Butterfly.................................313Glossary.......................................................317Bibliography...................................................319Index..........................................................323

Chapter One

The Fabric of a Vision

Our story begins at the end of the nineteenth century in the twilight years of the theory of the "ether": a theory of space, time, and matter, which was soon to be superseded by Einstein's theory of relativity and by the theory of quantum mechanics. A Norwegian scientist made a remarkable discovery while working on the ether theory, a discovery that was to lead to a new beginning in meteorology.

A Phoenix Arises

A pensive, thirty-six-year-old Vilhelm Bjerknes peered through a quarter-pane of his window at a city shrouded by a sky as gray as lead. It was a bitterly cold afternoon in November 1898 and Stockholm was preparing itself for a taste of winter. Snow had been falling gently since early morning, but a strengthening northerly wind began to whisk the flurries into great billows that obliterated the skyline. We may imagine Bjerknes returning to the fireside with anticipation of the warmth keeping the chill at bay, relaxing in a chair, and allowing his thoughts to wander. As the fire began to roar and the blizzard strengthened, his growing sense of physical comfort was accompanied by a feeling of inner contentment: he was at one with the world. However, this wasn't just the simple pleasure that comes from finding sanctuary from the winter's rage; it was deeper and much more profound.

Bjerknes gazed at a spark as it flickered and swirled up the chimney. The tiny cinder disappeared from view, carried into the even greater swirl of the wind and snow outside. He continued to watch the dance of the smoke and flames, and listen to the howl of the storm. But he did so in a way that he had never done before: the spiraling of smoke above the fire, and the intensification of the storm—events that had been witnessed by mankind since the dawn of civilization—were two manifestations of a new theorem in physics. It would amount to a small landmark—not quite as prominent in the timeline of science as Newton's laws of motion and gravitation—but all the same it would explain fundamental features of weather. The salient idea had remained hidden, locked away from meteorologists behind the heavy door of mathematics. The new theorem was due to Vilhelm Bjerknes, but it was destined to do much more than carry his name; it would propel meteorology into a cutting-edge science of the twentieth century and pave the way to modern weather forecasting. And it would do this because, above all else, it would first change his vocation.

But the irony was that Bjerknes never intended his ideas to shape history, or his own destiny, in this way at all. Indeed, while he relished the excitement of opening a new window onto the laws of nature, he agonized over his priorities and ambitions, and he began to question the future of his career. His newfound vision was borne out of a rapidly waning and increasingly unfashionable development in theoretical physics. For more than half a century, a group of leading physicists and mathematicians had been trying to decide if phenomena such as light and forces such as magnetism travel through empty space or whether they travel through some sort of invisible medium.

By the 1870s there was a growing consensus that empty space must in fact be filled with an invisible fluid, which was called the ether. The basic idea was very simple: just as sound waves travel through the air, and just as two boats passing each other feel their mutual presence because the water between them is disturbed, light waves and magnetic forces should travel through some sort of cosmic medium. The scientists trying to understand and quantify the properties of such an ether believed that there must be some similarity to the way water, air, and other fluids affect and are affected by objects that move within them. By showing how experiments with objects immersed in water replicate the type of effects that are familiar from experiments with magnets and electrical devices, they conceived of demonstrating the existence of this ether.

In 1881, at the prestigious Paris international electric exhibition, which attracted the likes of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison, a Norwegian scholar by the name of Carl Anton Bjerknes, a professor of mathematics from the royal Frederick University in Christiana (now called Oslo), and his eighteen-year-old son, Vilhelm, exhibited their experiments aimed at verifying the existence of the ether. observers, who included some of the most outstanding scientists of the times such as Hermann von Helmholtz and sir William Thomson (who became Lord Kelvin), were clearly impressed. Bjerknes and his son won a top accolade for their exhibit, and this success placed them firmly in the spotlight of the international physics community.

Their rising fame and status inevitably led to the gifted young Vilhelm following in his father's footsteps, not only as a mathematician and physicist but also as one of the proponents of the theory of the ether. Research on this hypothesis was refueled in the late 1880s when Heinrich Hertz, in a series of extraordinary experiments, demonstrated the existence of electromagnetic waves propagating through space, as predicted by the Scottish theoretical physicist James clerk Maxwell. In 1894 Hertz published (posthumously) a book outlining his ideas for how the ether should play a crucial role in formulating the science of mechanics.

Now this was no small undertaking. We are taught that the science of mechanics was born when Galileo introduced the concept of inertia, and Newton quantified the laws of motion by relating force to acceleration, and so on. We court triteness to mention the success of mechanics in describing the motion of everything from ping-pong balls to planets. But Hertz believed there was something missing; that is, the great bastion of Newtonian mechanics appeared to rely on some rather intangible concepts. So he set out, in an axiomatic way, a general strategy for explaining how actions within the ether could explain phenomena that hitherto required the more elusive ideas of "force" and "energy" that appeared to influence our world without any tangible mechanism for doing so. The general principles set forth in Hertz's book appeared to systematize the program Vilhelm's father had initiated. Carl Bjerknes's work lacked...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0691152721
• ISBN 13: 9780691152721
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 325
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchbär; info@buchbaer.de; ; Weberstr. 67; Osnabrück; 49084; Deutschland