page_title: Weather forecasting
section_title: Modern methods
hierarchical_section_title: Weather forecasting / History / Modern methods
caption_attribution_description: English: Royal Charter (ship)
context_page_description: Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the conditions of the atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia and formally since the 19th century. Weather forecasts are made by collecting quantitative data about the current state of the atmosphere at a given place and using meteorology to project how the atmosphere will change.
  Once calculated by hand based mainly upon changes in barometric pressure, current weather conditions, and sky condition or cloud cover, weather forecasting now relies on computer-based models that take many atmospheric factors into account. Human input is still required to pick the best possible forecast model to base the forecast upon, which involves pattern recognition skills, teleconnections, knowledge of model performance, and knowledge of model biases. The inaccuracy of forecasting is due to the chaotic nature of the atmosphere, the massive computational power required to solve the equations that describe the atmosphere, the error involved in measuring the initial conditions, and an incomplete understanding of atmospheric processes.
context_section_description: It was not until the invention of the electric telegraph in 1835 that the modern age of weather forecasting began. Before that, the fastest that distant weather reports could travel was around 160 kilometres per day (100 mi/d), but was more typically 60–120 kilometres per day (40–75 mi/day) (whether by land or by sea). By the late 1840s, the telegraph allowed reports of weather conditions from a wide area to be received almost instantaneously, allowing forecasts to be made from knowledge of weather conditions further upwind.
  The two men credited with the birth of forecasting as a science were an officer of the Royal Navy Francis Beaufort and his protégé Robert FitzRoy. Both were influential men in British naval and governmental circles, and though ridiculed in the press at the time, their work gained scientific credence, was accepted by the Royal Navy, and formed the basis for all of today's weather forecasting knowledge.
  Beaufort developed the Wind Force Scale and Weather Notation coding, which he was to use in his journals for the remainder of his life. He also promoted the development of reliable tide tables around British shores, and with his friend William Whewell, expanded weather record-keeping at 200 British Coast guard stations.
  Robert FitzRoy was appointed in 1854 as chief of a new department within the Board of Trade to deal with the collection of weather data at sea as a service to mariners. This was the forerunner of the modern Meteorological Office. All ship captains were tasked with collating data on the weather and computing it, with the use of tested instruments that were loaned for this purpose.
  A storm in 1859 that caused the loss of the Royal Charter inspired FitzRoy to develop charts to allow predictions to be made, which he called "forecasting the weather", thus coining the term "weather forecast". Fifteen land stations were established to use the telegraph to transmit to him daily reports of weather at set times leading to the first gale warning service. His warning service for shipping was initiated in February 1861, with the use of telegraph communications. The first daily weather forecasts were published in The Times in 1861. In the following year a system was introduced of hoisting storm warning cones at the principal ports when a gale was expected. The "Weather Book" which FitzRoy published in 1863 was far in advance of the scientific opinion of the time.
  As the electric telegraph network expanded, allowing for the more rapid dissemination of warnings, a national observational network was developed, which could then be used to provide synoptic analyses. Instruments to continuously record variations in meteorological parameters using photography were supplied to the observing stations from Kew Observatory – these cameras had been invented by Francis Ronalds in 1845 and his barograph had earlier been used by FitzRoy.
  To convey accurate information, it soon became necessary to have a standard vocabulary describing clouds; this was achieved by means of a series of classifications first achieved by Luke Howard in 1802, and standardized in the International Cloud Atlas of 1896.
caption: The Royal Charter sank in an 1859 storm, stimulating the establishment of modern weather forecasting.
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