Why Numerical Weather Prediction Modeling Technology?
After decades of government investment of billions of dollars, NWP models have become the workhorses of modern operational weather forecasting. Government forecasts in every industrialized nation rely on “guidance charts” produced from their own—and increasingly, through collaborative agreements—other nations’ NWP models. Furthermore, NWP models now are used for many applications in the public interest other than traditional weather forecasting. With the rapid decrease in computing and networking costs compared to 10 – 15 years ago, NWP technology began to migrate into the private sector to address specific economic interests. These include air quality, agriculture, transport, energy, and many others. Given the current three-dimensional state of the atmosphere, NWP models are designed to predict how it will change with time. Since we are concerned with variation in both space and time, these are often referred to as “state-of-the-atmosphere variables” (SAVs). In practice, SAVs are envi
