ANST - GULF WAR WEATHER

[Sean Gulick]

Greetings,

Just a note about this discussion of weather for Gulf Wars.  Basically it is too
soon to know.  While I am not a meteorologist I am familiar with forward modeling
and in the case of weather prediction far too many factors exist to be accurate
very far in the future (primarily because of water vapor but that is more than most
of you want to know).  Specifically, we have gotten skilled at predicting 1-2 days
in advance.  At 3 days, we are pushing the limit of what forward modeling can due
accurately and by 5 days it is just a guess.  This guess is made by a computer and
interpreted by a meteorologist but the accuracy for anywhere in the latitudes of
the United States during any of the transient weather periods, such as Spring, is
quite low.  Where does this leave 7 to 10 day forecasts?  Based entirely on past
climate history, and if anybody has been paying attention to weather recently
previous year's climate has become an increasingly poor way to predict weather.  To
sum up we have nothing as of yet to hang our hat about the weather for Gulf Wars.
By this weekend (the 3-5 day range) we will sort of know, but it really won't be
until most of us are on the road before we can say with probability that we do
know.  Even then the Gods can be fickle and one day forecasts still rarely top
80-90% accuracy range.

Hope that helps,
Gideon

P.S. If there are any actual meteorologists on this list I know I am
oversimplifying but this e-mail was getting too long already!

--
'Honor the past, live the present, create the future'
________________________________________
Sean Sandifer Gulick, PhD

PGI Postdoctoral Fellow
Institute for Geophysics
University of Texas
4412 Spicewood Springs Rd Bldg 600
Austin, TX 78759

Phone:  (512) 232-3262
Fax:   (512) 475-6338
E-mail: sean at ig.utexas.edu
Web: http://www.ig.utexas.edu/staff/sean/sean.htm


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