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Questions and Answers
What can help fill in the gaps of upper-air data?
What can help fill in the gaps of upper-air data?
- Weather balloons
- Interpolation
- Satellite measurements (correct)
- Computer models
What is a limitation of computer models?
What is a limitation of computer models?
- They are expensive
- They are inaccurate
- They require a lot of computing power
- They are limited to certain spots on the virtual Earth (correct)
What is the purpose of using multiple models to make a better forecast?
What is the purpose of using multiple models to make a better forecast?
- To reduce the amount of error
- To provide more accurate predictions
- To simulate the atmosphere in three dimensions
- To make use of the strengths and limitations of each model (correct)
What is one way in which errors can get introduced into computer models?
What is one way in which errors can get introduced into computer models?
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What is the main purpose of computer models?
What is the main purpose of computer models?
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Study Notes
- Observational errors can creep into computer models' initializations due to imperfect measurements and uneven distribution of data.
- Weather balloons help provide some upper-air data, but there are few sites where they're launched and large gaps exist between observation sites.
- Satellite measurements help fill in the gaps of the upper-air data, but they're expensive and there are few of them.
- Weather models must simulate the atmosphere in three dimensions, so they need initialization data for conditions above the surface of the Earth.
- Initialization errors in computer models can rapidly grow, leading to wildly inaccurate predictions.
- Other errors get introduced into computer models during the calculations themselves, such as rounding numbers and skipped calculations.
- Making the model's time step shorter reduces the amount of error, but requires more computing power.
- Computer models perform their calculations only at certain spots on the virtual Earth, and then interpolate the results to cover the whole globe, further introducing error.
- Computer models are used to simulate weather patterns.
- Each model has its own strengths and limitations.
- Meteorologists use many models to make a better forecast.
- Model forecasts are imperfect, but they are still very useful.
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