What did meteorologists have to learn to be able to reliably predict the weather accurately?
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I am pretty late here, but I wanted to give perhaps a slightly different view. I am a forecaster but I don’t feel I had to learn anything crazy.
My short answer here:
In today’s world, the basic behaviors of weather can be learned and applied to current conditions using the many tools available to predict how it will change.
My long answer:
It kinda depends on what you mean “accurately”. As noted elsewhere, people starting to track air pressure, temperature, and winds started to be able to forecast future weather conditions based on observed patterns over time.
What is available today is way more advanced than even 15 years ago.
I am an Air National Guard meteorologist. We are taught a tiny bit of general theory (certainly no higher level maths or physics), and then a bunch of applications of that theory and forecasting rules (Weather tech school is 8 months.) The models used to be just things to consider within your forecast process. Nowadays, a lot of people just follow what the model says. There is often still an interpretation needed from looking at model data to enhance accuracy further. Also, it can be a lot more challenging forecasting overseas, in data-sparse environments where you might only have 2 or 3 (or zero!) weather observation stations in the entire country.
We can definitely produce accurate forecasts, even without models. (Although those skills would be extremely rusty for everyone, including me).
I would probably consider what we learn to be the bare bones of just “being able to forecast” without knowing much of the underlying theory.
Ex: Why does an air parcel moving through a short-wave trough experience vorticity, and how does that vorticity change the properties of the air parcel?
I have no idea. I just know that troughs are associated with positive vorticity advection, which is an indicator of instability.
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