[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Sign-in] [Mail] [Setup] [Help]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
|
Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: Inside the world of long range weather forecasting Inside the world of long range weather forecasting Friday, 24 March 2006 Crowded House sang, "Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you", one man who boldly strides into the future with the weather is long range forecaster Haydon Walker. Predicting the future can be fraught with difficulty. Many of us have joked that the Bureau of Meteorology can't get the weather right one day at a time, so how on earth is somebody supposed to get it right months in advance? "I think when you're forecasting the weather twelve to eighteen months in advance people put a question mark up to a certain extent", Haydon Walker explains, "I don't really worry about it, because I've had a lot of successes since I've been conducting the weather forecast since 1994. I've have had my misses here and there, but I don't get discouraged with that." Predicting the weather runs in the Walker family, Haydon's father Lennox was a long range forecaster, "I did follow Lennox around a lot of the time. One occasion was when the Russians put the space ship up in the atmosphere with the monkeys on board. We used to go out, I'd be on his shoulders, look through the telescope, and I was fascinated with it, that was when I was about aged five." "I use a telescope with a lens on the end of it, so it doesn't hurt your eyes" Haydon says, "you can look at the sunspots on a daily basis, usually about 9 o'clock in the morning. You always have to watch them at a standard time each day so it doesn't vary. If you look at the sun it may be in a different position if it was two hours later. If you make a precise time, at say 9 o'clock in the morning, you can monitor them very effectively as they cross the sun's surface." Walker's clients range from air conditioning companies to brides planning their big day. Even the fashion industry likes to know his opinion on what the next season has in store, "Clothing companies want to know if it's going to be a wet winter. If it's going to be a wet winter, there's going to be more blacks and greys as opposed to the spring colours, they don't want to be selling beautiful and bright clothes!" Haydon isn't afraid to rock the scientific boat, he has strong opinions on so-called 'global warming', "the industrial revolution started in the 1770s with the invention of the cotton gin. Before that we had all these catastrophes with wild weather conditions back in the previous centuries. We had no industrial revolution back then. So what is different back then and now? I think people are pushing a barrow...Political grandstanding", Walker says, "everything is relative. When you have high solar radiation, sunspot activity, The ice caps melt, more water goes back into the ocean. When you have low sunspot activity, low solar radiation, the water goes back and freezes....The fact is, it's pretty straightforward." Long range weather forecasting has its detractors, "they don't praise your successes, they let you know when you're wrong", Walker explains, but he may have found someone to take up his mantle, "I have a son. He's very keen on looking at the weather, he's eight. Looking at the weather maps on the TV, I suppose it brings thoughts back to when I first started with Lennox up on his shoulders look through the telescope at night."
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
|
||
|
[Home]
[Headlines]
[Latest Articles]
[Latest Comments]
[Post]
[Sign-in]
[Mail]
[Setup]
[Help]
|
||