Vehicles of the Gods or the result of the coalescence of billions of water droplets? Of course today we know the answer. This presentation will will explore what we used to believe, how we came to know what we know now, and what current theory predicts about the future.
From the Un-Distinguished Lecture Series (http://ws.cs.ubc.ca/~udls/). The talk was given May 25, 2007.
12. Meteorology since Aristotle
First proposed link von Neumann
between CO2 and assembled a team to
First attempt at
global warming apply the
numerical
computation of the
weather First ENIAC to weather
prediction radiosonde forecasting
1930
1922 1950
1938
18. Two Categories of Clouds
• Cumulus
– Vertical buildup
• Stratus
– Horizontal layers
Photos by http://www.flickr.com/people/teo/
and http://www.flickr.com/people/b16/
19. Types of Clouds
• Cirrus
– Highest clouds
– Wispy
– Thin sheets
– Made of ice crystals
– Cirrostratus
– Cirrocumulus
Photo by http://www.flickr.com/people/teodegas/
20. Types of Clouds
• Midlevel clouds
– Motion apparent
– More substantial
than cirrus
– Altostratus
– Altocumulus
Photo by http://www.flickr.com/people/nicholas_t/
21. Types of Clouds
• Cumulonimbus
– Extreme
vertical
development
– Thunderstorms
– Hail
Photo by http://www.flickr.com/people/pulpolux/
26. Computers and Clouds
QuickTime and a
YUV420 codec decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
From the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
27. Computers and Clouds
QuickTime and a
YUV420 codec decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
SIGGRAPH 2005
28. Additional Resources
• Aristotle. Meteorology. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/meteorology.html
• NASA. The Importance of Understanding Clouds. 2005.
http://eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/ftp_docs/NASAFactsUnderstandingClouds.pdf
• Steve Graham, Claire Parkinson, and Mous Chahine. Weather Forecasting Through the
Ages. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/WxForecasting/printall.php
• MIT OpenCourseWare: Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/EarthAtmosphericandPlanetarySciences/index.htm
• Richard Hamblyn. The Invention of Clouds: How an Amateur Meteorologist Forged the
Language of the Skies. 2001.