.. title: New View on the Weather
.. slug: new-view-on-the-weather
.. date: 2017-11-27 22:17:18 UTC+01:00
.. tags: weather, book
.. description:
.. type: text
Taking great pleasure in outdoor activities, it has always been
important for me to have accurate weather predictions available.
Although localized weather forecasts on the web or from apps
are very good nowadays, it turns out that some qualitative insight
greatly improves understanding the general weather situation.
Having enjoyed it a lot, this post is a recommendation for the book
"Do-it-yourself Wettervorhersage" (currently in German only) from Urs
Neu.
.. image:: /images/do-it-yourself-wetter.jpg
:alt: Do-it-yourself Wettervorhersage
:align: center
.. TEASER_END
It has been a while since the somewhat hidden Meteomedia (part of
`MeteoGroup `_) forecasts for the next 4
days for a `wide range of weather stations
`_ around Europe
have been suggested to me. Instantly I was impressed by the
granularity of the prediction, especially the distribution of sunshine
and precipitation through the day. And indeed these predictions have
been of great value on many instances in the past. In 2014 for
example we were planning a 4 day hiking trip and TV and Radio
predicted a lot of rain for the first two days. With the detailed
rain prediction of Meteomedia we convinced ourselves that the amount
of rain was tolerable with the right clothing. So it was only due to
Meteomedia that we started on what turned out to be one the most
memorable hiking trip of the year.
To understand what I am talking about, it is probably best to look at
the current prediction for any weather station, for example
`Wetterstation Ulm-Mähringen
`_.
With such reliable information, I have been using little if nothing
else in the past years. From time to time however I felt that it
would be interesting to have a deeper understanding of the processes
governing our weather. On the one hand it seemed interesting in its
own right and on the other hand I always wondered if and how the raw
information required for such a task would be available in today's
internet.
With these background thoughts simmering for some time, it was a quick
decision from reading the "Do-it-yourself Wettervorhersage" review in
the `Panorama
`_ magazine
of the German Alpine Club (DAV) to ordering the book in question.
Without spoiling the lecture, the key message of the book is that a
qualitative (rather than a quantitative) understanding of the weather
is rather straightforward and can be derived not from the ground level
pressure maps, but from the so called *500 hPa map*. Roughly spoken,
this map shows the pressure distribution in approximately 5500m above
sea level. This is a good source of information as the air
movements are unhindered by ground features and still free from
phenomena prevalent in the upper Troposphere.
Different forecasts for this kind of data set are readily available
even for free, e.g. on `wetterzentrale.de
`_. Next to
the `Northern Hemisphere Overview
`_
there is also a `Central Europe
`_
rendering available offering a good insight for the southern Germany
region that I am mostly interested in.
The book quite succinctly teaches how to interpret this data for a
higher level understanding of the weather context. As I have used my
new knowledge now already for some time, I can confirm that my
understanding of the long term developments for the next week or two
have become much better and my ability to judge the reliability of any
of the localized weather forecasts have improved significantly.
Although it seems that there are also freely accessible resources
available on the net on how to interpret the 500 hPa maps, reading the
book is very efficient and so I can only recommend that if you are
also interested to get a better understanding of the weather to `buy
the book on amazon
`_.
Quick links:
* `500 hPa Northern Hemisphere Overview `_
* `500 hPa Central Europe `_
* `MeteoMedia German Weather Stations `_