How do weather forecasters work?
In: Earth Science
We have a lot of detectors (termometers, pressure sensors, humidity sensors, wind speed and direction etc) all around the world. We know how it all was changing before and can assume it will continue to do so into the nearest future. If for example mass of cold air was moving south it will most likely not abruptly stop.
There are also some basic rules that we can apply. Like hot air rises, wind flows from high pressure zone to low pressure zone. If hot and cold mass of air meets it will create clouds. If humidity of that air is high it will rain and so forth.
We can also look at historical data and trends. Like how temperature usually changes from day to night or season to season.
We can also just look outside. There are finite ways how a cloud can look like. We just know what clouds bring rain and which don’t.
But there is a lot of guess work involved, that’s why most forecasts become more and more inaccurate the further into the future you look and even the best predictions are only somewhat accurate to maybe 10 days.
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