ENVR 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Data Quality, Common Application

• School: McGill University
• Department: Environment
• Course: ENVR 200
• Professor: Anthony Ricciardi

Document Summary

Meteorologists: focus on real-time data and pressure to determine weather in immediate future. It has to be one specific (not always right) prediction for a given time. Climate scientists: focus on atmospheric conditions to determine patterns and averages. Based on different records and prediction to come up with a climate average for a certain period (longer amount of time than weather predictions). They are both chaotic systems: meaning they are extremely sensitive to initial conditions. However, our understanding of initial condition is somewhat limited. Ensemble prediction: when initial conditions are varied slightly, producing many forecasts giving an ensemble of possible outcomes. We can create an ensemble by perturbing initial conditions, change the way we do the calculations and change how we parameterize certain processes. Most common application for weather prediction is for people to use computer models (simulations) in order to make a future prediction.