PART IV — DYNAMICS OF THE ATMOSPHERE-OCEAN SYSTEM 



priate weather-forecasting stations. 

 Similarly, in-flight weather data over 

 the continental United States should 

 be made available on call to stations 

 making short-period predictions for 

 the public, for airfields, and for low- 

 level flying activities. The large num- 

 bers of aircraft in U.S. airspace con- 

 stitute existing platforms with the 

 potential for providing much valuable 

 data for short-period forecasting. 



As a general rule, the shorter the 

 period of a forecast, the more de- 

 tailed and dense (in three dimensions) 

 should be the data used in the predic- 

 tion process and the smaller the re- 

 quired area to be represented by the 

 data. The current rawinsonde net- 

 work over the United States is excel- 

 lent for long-period forecasts, but as 

 the period decreases to half a day or 

 less the density of observations be- 

 gins to leave much to be desired. 

 Further, upper-air wind analysis and 

 prognoses prepared by the computer 

 and used by the forecaster are 



smoothed in the computational proc- 

 ess. 



Computer Models — Efforts to pro- 

 duce lower-troposphere computer 

 models with finer and finer meshes 

 should be expanded, since work done 

 to date has already shown some 

 gain. Development of adequate dis- 

 play techniques should accompany 

 these efforts. 



Radar and Satellite Data — In- 

 creased emphasis should be placed 

 on better utilization of radar informa- 

 tion, including digital processing and 

 use of interactive graphics to display 

 data and to integrate them with other 

 kinds of information. 



Greatly increased research should 

 be conducted to apply meteorological 

 satellite data to the short-term fore- 

 cast problem. 



The Man-Machine Mix — Consid- 

 erably greater effort should be di- 

 rected toward the man-machine mix 



in forecasting. There should be 

 greater exploitation of the valuable — 

 albeit subjective — Norwegian theory 

 of air masses and fronts. Digital 

 graphics offer significant potential. 



Microminiaturization should be em- 

 phasized in the development of new 

 sensing and processing equipment in 

 the interests of reducing lag times of 

 sensors as well as of reducing the 

 weight of equipment that must be 

 borne on aircraft, rockets, or bal- 

 loons. 



Regardless of research directed at 

 improving short-period forecasting, 

 however, progress will almost in- 

 evitably be slow (except for new 

 kinds of applications) because of the 

 chaotic nature of smaller-scale at- 

 mospheric phenomena and because 

 meteorologists are required to state 

 certain kinds of prediction in prob- 

 abilistic terms. In some areas the 

 state of the art appears to have 

 reached a plateau; if this is so, what 

 are needed are breakthroughs. 



104 



