1
Introduction
The possibility of deterministic weather prediction was suggested by Vilhelm
Bjerknes as early as 1904. Around the time of the First World War, Lewis Richardson actually attempted to produce such a forecast by manually integrating a finitedifference approximation to the equations goveming atmospheric motion. Unfortunately, his calculations did not yield a reasonable forecast. Moreover, the human
labor required to obtain this disappointing result was so great that subsequent
attempts at deterministic weather prediction had to await the introduction of a
high-speed computational aid. In 1950 a team of researchers, under the direction
of Jule Charney and lohn von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study, at
Princeton, joumeyed to the Aberdeen Proving Ground, where they worked for approximately twenty-four hours to coax a one-day weather forecast from the first
general-purpose electronic computer, the ENIAC. 1 The first computer-generated
weather forecast was surprisingly good, and its success led to the rapid growth of
a new meteorological subdiscipline, "numerical weather prediction." These early
efforts in numerical weather prediction also began a long and fruitful collaboration between numerical analysts and atmospheric scientists.? The use of numerical models in atmospheric and oceanic science has subsequently expanded into
almost all areas of current research. Numerical models are currently employed to
study phenomena as diverse as global climate change, the interaction of ocean
currents with bottom topography, and the development of rotation in tomadic
thunderstorms.
1ENIAC is an acronym for Electron ic Numerical Integrator and Calculator.
2Further detail s about these early weather prediction efforts may be found in Bjerkne s (1904),
Richardson (1922), Chamey et al. (1950), Burk s and Burks (1981 ), and Thompson (1983).
D. R. Durran, Numerical Methods for Wave Equations in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 1999
Introduction
The possibility of deterministic weather prediction was suggested by Vilhelm
Bjerknes as early as 1904. Around the time of the First World War, Lewis Richardson actually attempted to produce such a forecast by manually integrating a finitedifference approximation to the equations goveming atmospheric motion. Unfortunately, his calculations did not yield a reasonable forecast. Moreover, the human
labor required to obtain this disappointing result was so great that subsequent
attempts at deterministic weather prediction had to await the introduction of a
high-speed computational aid. In 1950 a team of researchers, under the direction
of Jule Charney and lohn von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study, at
Princeton, joumeyed to the Aberdeen Proving Ground, where they worked for approximately twenty-four hours to coax a one-day weather forecast from the first
general-purpose electronic computer, the ENIAC. 1 The first computer-generated
weather forecast was surprisingly good, and its success led to the rapid growth of
a new meteorological subdiscipline, "numerical weather prediction." These early
efforts in numerical weather prediction also began a long and fruitful collaboration between numerical analysts and atmospheric scientists.? The use of numerical models in atmospheric and oceanic science has subsequently expanded into
almost all areas of current research. Numerical models are currently employed to
study phenomena as diverse as global climate change, the interaction of ocean
currents with bottom topography, and the development of rotation in tomadic
thunderstorms.
1ENIAC is an acronym for Electron ic Numerical Integrator and Calculator.
2Further detail s about these early weather prediction efforts may be found in Bjerkne s (1904),
Richardson (1922), Chamey et al. (1950), Burk s and Burks (1981 ), and Thompson (1983).
D. R. Durran, Numerical Methods for Wave Equations in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 1999