Global Weather Experiment (1980)

the trouble is the weather can't make up its mind about what it is going to do until just before it does it our job is to find out how far ahead the weather shows at hand the global weather experiment will give us an extraordinary opportunity to get started on the question of why our climate behaves the way it does not only to help guide us in our human activity but also to warn us taste some of those activities may possibly turn around and influence the climate itself the global weather experiment is the largest international scientific experiment in history 140 nations are participating the laboratory is the whole planet [Music] dr. Verner sue me chairman u.s. global atmospheric research program for the first time ever we'll be able to see and observe the atmosphere on all scale the northern hemisphere the southern hemisphere east and west poles and traffic dr. rex fleming director and coordinator of the US effort in the global weather experiment thousands of observations computer programs software systems tests check out each of the components ships airplanes buoys satellites almost be ready at the same time it's just a tremendous effort all has to go off together to make it all happen requires the cooperation of all nations chairman of the international joint organizing committee dr. Joseph Schneider insky there's been a steady improvement in the reliability of weather forecasting over the last 25 years much of this has come from the growing use of large computer models of the atmosphere but it's becoming quite obvious now that any further improvements are going to require an extraordinary effort in order to increase the reliability as well as the range of weather prediction that's what the global weather experiment is all about more accurate and long-range weather predictions can be advanced value to man in planning his weather dependent activities but we can't predict the weather with 100% accuracy at a specific time and place [Music] crowd in this place flood in another the energy crunch four billion people in the world going up to six billion before the year 2000 where are they going to get enough water enough food how much energy can we afford to get the things people need and want of course most people are concerned about whether they deal with it and talk about it all the time to builders and engineers it affects location of a project startup time and pace where the special equipment will be needed different construction materials when to pour concrete how to make best use of Labor to people in transportation it involves schedules which you take maintenance how to adapt to what can be expected from the effects of rain heat or cold to the farmers it's not only when to plant or whether a crop will succeed or fail it's even a matter of whether fertilizer and chemicals can be spread on the surface of a field because expected rain will work it into the soil or weather 12 tons of disking Reagan tractor will have to be hauled around to incorporate those chemicals because there won't be any rain to do it well enough to the power people it's how much energy will be needed for darker days or longer nights a hotter days or cold you do all of us it can be a matter of life and death every energy process we use generates heat that's a law of physics so with all the increased use of energy for the things we have to do we are producing heat more than ever before now we have a new danger thermal pollution heat held in by the blanket of our atmosphere what some have called the greenhouse effect how far can this go before every year we melt more and more of the polar icecap with all the consequences that could entail for the whole planet or is the planet in a long-term cooling trend more significant than all the heat of civilization these are the kinds of things we've got to learn more about how predictable is the atmosphere do we know how it works absorbing and transmitting the tremendous radiation of the Sun held in the force of gravity and rotating with the earth the atmosphere is a complex system the lowest layer of the atmosphere the troposphere where most of our weather is generated is a thin shell like the skin on an apple here water vapor rises from the surface of seas evaporated by the Sun it is dispersed and carried along with large air masses and winds caused by differences in temperature the spinning earth produces large-scale planet-wide waves which carry our good and bad weather these waves are long-lived and so we are optimistic about improving our forecasts at about 35,000 feet our narrow bands of strong winds the jet stream these winds sometimes break down into irregular areas of very intense winds making forecasting more difficult under these conditions we sometimes have severe storms such a regular and turbulent motion is impossible to predict in detail so there are limits to how good our predictions can be using measurements the old way with thermometers and balloons and the new way with satellites we make the atmosphere visible to the computer where do we get North forecast most of these come from the National Weather Service from observations provided by weather stations around the world these are part of the existing world weather watch the network of stations isn't too bad over the continents of the world but it's simply not complete enough it can't be the reason is that the weather has global routes we simply don't measure enough for the world's oceans and atmospheres what does it take how much of a globe would we have to observe for accurate forecasts over various periods of time for a one to two day forecast for the United States we need information gathered from 20 degrees north of the equator to about 75 degrees north and up to an altitude of about 10 kilometers or about 33,000 feet for three to five days we need information about the surface temperature of the seas to and must extend our sensors still higher in the sky and south of the Equator for forecasts beyond a week we'd have to have data from every part of the planet from hundreds of feet beneath the sea two miles into the sky right now our existing surface observation points or more or less like this we have land stations and ships at sea but what we really need is a full three-dimensional picture of the atmosphere our upper air observations balloons planes and satellites give us the profiles of temperature pressure humidity but there are too few of them for long-range predictions we get adequate weather information from only 15% of the earth this tells us what's happening at particular places at particular times but weather is being generated everywhere it's global and linked in space and time and the gaping holes in the information grid most of them in the southern hemisphere are holes in our ability to forecast and in our understanding in 1967 the long-term global atmospheric research program was begun the experiment is part of it all over the world an intensive probe into atmosphere and ocean dynamics and interface is going on well the global weather experiment our observation points cover the globe as never before the strategy was therefore to augment and improve the world weather watch and use that as the basic observation platform to time the experiment to make use of polar satellites and five new geostationary satellites that could cover most of the planet and to coordinate agencies and scientific organizations from virtually every country on Earth for polar orbiting satellites to from the Soviet Union to from the u.s. supplied temperature and humidity profiles data on clouds and sea surface temperatures five geostationary satellite observe cloud motion and report on winds in tropical and lower latitudes these are provided by the US Japan and the European Space Agency the satellite coverage extends over a greatly expanded world weather watch observing system supplemented by ship reports of surface conditions and reports from commercial aircraft many of them equipped with automatic instrument packages rigged to their navigational systems still there are gaps mostly in the tropics and farther south during the experiment the area from 30 degrees north to 10 degrees north is well covered by weather watch land stations ships and aircraft now from 10 degrees north to 10 south in that important tropical band around the equator we supplement our existing systems especially during - concentrated observing periods with tropical wind ships for more than 20 countries and specially dedicated to this project and the oceanographic objectives of the german special US aircraft releasing dropsonde instrument packages by parachute along carefully laid-out tracks and an armada of constant level balloons at high altitudes to give readings where the aircraft can't go and in the southern latitudes the value of the satellite systems is greatly increased by deployment of drifting buoys to measure surface temperature and pressure over vast expanses of Southern Oceans these are provided by Australia Canada France New Zealand Norway and the u.s. assisting in the deployment of these buoys will be Argentina Brazil Chile and the Soviet Union much of the information is radioed to satellites stored and relayed back to earth stations on a regular schedule with these systems our grid of good information should look more like this data for a whole Earth view this coordinated research plan has been provided by many scientists oceanographers and meteorologists working with the United States Committee for the global atmospheric research program but this is only the beginning research using this data will take several years and will be conducted in laboratories and universities throughout the United States and the world the global weather experiment should have several outcomes first of all we should determine what the ultimate limits of weather prediction are we would then be in the position to say what it will take in the way of a global database and more sophisticated computer models in order to get as close as possible to this ultimate limit what it means to the world is ultimately better control of food water energy a lot of scientific work has brought us to where we are today it will be years before all the research will be completed but we are moving we have shifted our point of view from here and now to what's going on in many places and now to a whole earth point of view a truly international experiment [Music]