Monitoring and Control: Weather Forecast

English for Engineering Papers

Prepared by:

William Simangunsong (170403112)

Brian (170403113)
Jamichael Damanik (170403115)
Class : C

Department of Industrial Engineering

Faculty of Engineering
University of Sumatera Utara
Medan
2017

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 PREFACE

Thank to Almighty God who has given His bless to the writers for finishing this English
for Engineering papers . The writers also wish to express his deep and sincere gratitude for
those who have guided in completing this paper, especially to Ir. Mangara M. Tambunan, M.Sc.
as the English for Engineering lecturer that always teaches us and give much knowledge about
how to be a professional engineer.
This English for Engineering papers contains some explanation about Monitoring and
control, especially weather forecast problem. I realized this papers is not perfect, but I hope it
can be useful for us. Critics and suggestion is needed here to make this papers be better.

Medan, December 5th, 2017

Authors

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 TABLE OF CONTENS

Preface …..............................................…………….................................2

Table Of Contents ...................................................................................3

CHAPTER I Describing automated systems..................................4

CHAPTER II Referring to measurable parameters..........................7

CHAPTER III Discussing readings and trends...............................8

CHAPTER IV Giving approximate figures..................................9

REFERENCE................................................................................................11

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 CHAPTER I
Describing automated systems

Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the

conditions of the atmosphere for a given location and time. Human beings have attempted to
predict the weather informally for millennia and formally since the 19th century. Weather
forecasts are made by collecting quantitative data about the current state of the atmosphere at
a given place and using meteorology to project how the atmosphere will change.

Weather forecasting is the application of current technology and science to predict the
state of the atmosphere for a future time and a given location. Weather forecasts are made by
collecting as much data as possible about the current state of the atmosphere (particularly the
temperature, humidity and wind) and using understanding of atmospheric processes (through
meteorology) to determine how the atmosphere evolves in the future. However, the chaotic
nature of the atmosphere and incomplete understanding of the processes mean that forecasts
become less accurate as the range of the forecast increases.

During the data assimilation process, information gained from the observations is used
in conjunction with a numerical model's most recent forecast for the time that observations
were made to produce the meteorological analysis.

Numerical weather prediction models are computer simulations of the atmosphere.

They take the analysis as the starting point and evolve the state of the atmosphere forward in
time using understanding of physics and fluid dynamics. The complicated equations which
govern how the state of a fluid changes with time require supercomputers to solve them. The
output from the model provides the basis of the weather forecast.

The basic idea of numerical weather prediction is to sample the state of the fluid at a
given time and use the equations of fluid dynamics and thermodynamics to estimate the state
of the fluid at some time in the future. The main inputs from country-based weather services
are surface observations from automated weather stations at ground level over land and from
weather buoys at sea.

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 Data from weather satellites are used in areas where traditional data sources are not
available. Compared with similar data from radiosondes, the satellite data has the advantage of
global coverage, however at a lower accuracy and resolution. Meteorological radar provide
information on precipitation location and intensity, which can be used to estimate precipitation
accumulations over time. Additionally, if a pulse Doppler weather radar is used then wind
speed and direction can be determined.

Models are initialized using this observed data. The irregularly spaced observations are
processed by data assimilation and objective analysis methods, which perform quality control
and obtain values at locations usable by the model's mathematical algorithms. The data are then
used in the model as the starting point for a forecast.

A major part of modern weather forecasting is the severe weather alerts and advisories
that the national weather service issue in the case that severe or hazardous weather is expected.
This is done to protect life and property. Some of the most commonly known of severe weather
advisories are the severe thunderstorm and tornado warning, as well as the severe thunderstorm
and tornado watch. Other forms of these advisories include winter weather, high wind, flood,
tropical cyclone, and fog. Severe weather advisories and alerts are broadcast through the media,
including radio, using emergency systems as the Emergency Alert System, which break into
regular programming.

CHAPTER II
Referring to measurable parameters

Weather radars send directional pulses of microwave radiation, on the order of a

microsecond long, using a cavity magnetron or klystron tube connected by a waveguide to a
parabolic antenna. The wavelengths of 1 – 10 cm are approximately ten times the diameter of
the droplets or ice particles of interest, because Rayleigh scattering occurs at these frequencies.
This means that part of the energy of each pulse will bounce off these small particles, back in
the direction of the radar station.

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 Shorter wavelengths are useful for smaller particles, but the signal is more quickly
attenuated. Thus 10 cm (S-band) radar is preferred but is more expensive than a 5 cm C-band
system. 3 cm X-band radar is used only for short-range units, and 1 cm Ka-band weather radar
is used only for research on small-particle phenomena such as drizzle and fog.W-band weather
radar systems have seen limited university use, but due to quicker attenuation, most data are
not operational.

Radar pulses spread out as they move away from the radar station. Thus the volume of
air that a radar pulse is traversing is larger for areas farther away from the station, and smaller
for nearby areas, decreasing resolution at far distances. At the end of a 150 – 200 km sounding
range, the volume of air scanned by a single pulse might be on the order of a cubic kilometer.
This is called the pulse volume.

Between each pulse, the radar station serves as a receiver as it listens for return signals
from particles in the air. The duration of the "listen" cycle is on the order of a millisecond,
which is a thousand times longer than the pulse duration. The length of this phase is determined
by the need for the microwave radiation (which travels at the speed of light) to propagate from
the detector to the weather target and back again, a distance which could be several hundred
kilometers. The horizontal distance from station to target is calculated simply from the amount
of time that elapses from the initiation of the pulse to the detection of the return signal. The
time is converted into distance by multiplying by the speed of light in air.

Assuming the Earth is round, the radar beam in vacuum would rise according to the
reverse curvature of the Earth. A weather radar network uses a series of typical angles that will
be set according to the needs. After each scanning rotation, the antenna elevation is changed
for the next sounding. This scenario will be repeated on many angles to scan all the volume of
air around the radar within the maximum range. Usually, this scanning strategy is completed
within 5 to 10 minutes to have data within 15 km above ground and 250 km distance of the
radar. For instance in Canada, the 5 cm weather radars use angles ranging from 0.3 to 25
degrees. The image to the right shows the volume scanned when multiple angles are used.
Radar returns are usually described by colour or level. The colours in a radar image
normally range from blue or green for weak returns, to red or magenta for very strong returns.
The numbers in a verbal report increase with the severity of the returns. For example, the U.S.
National Doppler Radar sites use the following scale for different levels of reflectivity:
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 magenta: 65 dBZ (extremely heavy precipitation, possible hail)
 red: 52 dBZ
 yellow: 36 dBZ
 green: 20 dBZ (light precipitation)

Another important use of radar data is the ability to assess the amount of precipitation
that has fallen over large basins, to be used in hydrological calculations; such data is useful in
flood control, sewer management and dam construction. The computed data from radar weather
may be used in conjunction with data from ground stations.

CHAPTER III
Discussing readings and trends

Global geoengineering/weather modification programs are completely disrupting the

planets natural weather patterns from top to bottom. The entire climate system is so totally out
of balance at this point that it is swinging radically from one extreme to another. These massive
fluctuations are being “forced” by the global climate/weather modification programs known as
“solar radiation management” (SRM) and “stratospheric aerosol geoengineering” (SAG).

In general, the further above average the temperatures are, the more precipitation there
will be. The lower the temps, the less precipitation there will be. At first glance this could seem
straight forward enough. After all, the atmosphere does hold 7% more moisture for every
degree of temperature rise, but that is not the full story any longer. The atmosphere is being
completely saturated with toxic, reflective, desiccating geoengineering particulates, and the jet
stream increasingly appears to be consistently manipulated with ionosphere heater installations.

The more the geo-engineers spray to try and cool down the temperatures, the less it will
rain, period. Add “artificial ice nucleation” to the spray mix and the precipitation appears to go
down still further. “Artificial ice nucleation” is a chemical process that can produce colder
weather/cloud temperatures and snow out of what should have been a rain storm at well above
freezing temperatures. If the temps are already cold enough for snow, this same process can
lower the temperatures even further, but at a cost, not much snow compared to historical norms.

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 There are, of course, exceptions to this when a very moisture laden storm system is ice
nucleated, but the “snow” from such system “conversions” is “heavy wet snow”. This recent
term coined by the Weather Channel describes the concrete-like “snow” that sticks like glue to
trees and causes utter decimation to the forests. Broken and tipped over trees are everywhere
in the Pacific Northwest from just such an “ice nucleated” storm in late December. The massive
amount of heavy metals in these snow storms, tested at the state certified lab, proves our storms
are being “seeded”. This “seeding” of artificial ice nucleating agents is accomplished by spray
disbursement into the clouds of a weather system by jet aircraft.

Though the geoengineering programs can and do cool very expansive regions, there is
a paradox, it comes at the cost of a worsened warming of the climate overall. The more they
spray, the more they have to spray to cover up the damage already done. In addition, as already
covered, the “engineered weather” comes at extreme cost to the environment as a whole. It is
also important to consider there are likely many as of yet unknown aspects of the global
spraying agenda.

CHAPTER IV
Giving approximate figures

Mathematical models based on the same physical principles can be used to generate
either short-term weather forecasts or longer-term climate predictions; the latter are widely
applied for understanding and projecting climate change. The improvements made to regional
models have allowed for significant improvements in tropical cyclone track and air quality
forecasts; however, atmospheric models perform poorly at handling processes that occur in a
relatively constricted area, such as wildfires.

Manipulating the vast datasets and performing the complex calculations necessary to
modern numerical weather prediction requires some of the most powerful supercomputers in
the world. Even with the increasing power of supercomputers, the forecast skill of numerical
weather models extends to only about six days. Factors affecting the accuracy of numerical
predictions include the density and quality of observations used as input to the forecasts, along
with deficiencies in the numerical models themselves. Post-processing techniques such as

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model output statistics (MOS) have been developed to improve the handling of errors in
numerical predictions.

A more fundamental problem lies in the chaotic nature of the partial differential
equations that govern the atmosphere. It is impossible to solve these equations exactly, and
small errors grow with time (doubling about every five days). Present understanding is that this
chaotic behavior limits accurate forecasts to about 14 days even with perfectly accurate input
data and a flawless model. In addition, the partial differential equations used in the model need
to be supplemented with parameterizations for solar radiation, moist processes (clouds and
precipitation), heat exchange, soil, vegetation, surface water, and the effects of terrain. In an
effort to quantify the large amount of inherent uncertainty remaining in numerical predictions,
ensemble forecasts have been used since the 1990s to help gauge the confidence in the forecast,
and to obtain useful results farther into the future than otherwise possible. This approach
analyzes multiple forecasts created with an individual forecast model or multiple models.

Some meteorological processes are too small-scale or too complex to be explicitly

included in numerical weather prediction models. Parameterization is a procedure for
representing these processes by relating them to variables on the scales that the model resolves.
For example, the gridboxes in weather and climate models have sides that are between 5
kilometers (3 mi) and 300 kilometers (200 mi) in length. A typical cumulus cloud has a scale
of less than 1 kilometer (0.6 mi), and would require a grid even finer than this to be represented
physically by the equations of fluid motion. Therefore, the processes that such clouds represent
are parameterized, by processes of various sophistication. In the earliest models, if a column
of air within a model gridbox was conditionally unstable (essentially, the bottom was warmer
and moister than the top) and the water vapor content at any point within the column became
saturated then it would be overturned (the warm, moist air would begin rising), and the air in
that vertical column mixed. More sophisticated schemes recognize that only some portions of
the box might convect and that entrainment and other processes occur. Weather models that
have gridboxes with sides between 5 and 25 kilometers (3 and 16 mi) can explicitly represent
convective clouds, although they need to parameterize cloud microphysics which occur at a
smaller scale.[44] The formation of large-scale (stratus-type) clouds is more physically based;
they form when the relative humidity reaches some prescribed value. Sub-grid scale processes
need to be taken into account. Rather than assuming that clouds form at 100% relative humidity,

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the cloud fraction can be related to a critical value of relative humidity less than 100%,
reflecting the sub grid scale variation that occurs in the real world.

The amount of solar radiation reaching the ground, as well as the formation of cloud
droplets occur on the molecular scale, and so they must be parameterized before they can be
included in the model. Atmospheric drag produced by mountains must also be parameterized,
as the limitations in the resolution of elevation contours produce significant underestimates of
the drag. This method of parameterization is also done for the surface flux of energy between
the ocean and the atmosphere, in order to determine realistic sea surface temperatures and type
of sea ice found near the ocean's surface. Sun angle as well as the impact of multiple cloud
layers is taken into account. Soil type, vegetation type, and soil moisture all determine how
much radiation goes into warming and how much moisture is drawn up into the adjacent
atmosphere, and thus it is important to parameterize their contribution to these processes.
Within air quality models, parameterizations take into account atmospheric emissions from
multiple relatively tiny sources (e.g. roads, fields, factories) within specific grid boxes.

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REFERENCE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_weather_prediction
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/extreme-weather-fluctuations-as-the-climate-reacts-to-
geoengineering/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_radar
http://www.weatherwizkids.com/?page_id=82
https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/weather_forecasting.htm
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WxForecasting/wx2.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_forecasting

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