On guessing games and interpretation of data animation
The architects of the weather-data detection, assimilation, and prediction frameworks culminating in GFS & EURO might bristle at the suggestion that theirs, the most expensive and sophisticated stretch to play the odds in human history (not to mention humankind's premiere scientific accomplishment, imho), amounts to a guessing game. A super smart guessing game: a half-dozen interlocking differential equations conceived as an impossible dream by Vilhelm Bjerknes -- how could this work when it takes an army of human "computers" more than a year to figure out tomorrow's weather?
Somehow it all came together, with a little help from supercomputers, and from visionaries wild enough to see what happens if you fly into the eye of a hurricane. That's Harry Wexler, who bestowed my mantra: "The atmosphere is indivisible." From this mantra emerges all understanding. It'll take you clear through Climate Science to general enlightenment. Everyone's allowed one foolish hope. I've got dibs on that one...
Regarding the Arctic this summer, I hear consternation about continual disagreement between models in the 2019 melting-season thread. (Lurkers like me have been kindly re-christened "new ice" -- I don't know if this level of forecasting churn is unusual or not.) Lurking Dorian raises the question: given that a model's basic function is to project forward from past events, is it reasonable to expect a model capable of predicting the unprecedented?
So there are a couple of things my swirly suite of IWPD animations are meant to keep an eye on: the health of the planet, and how well the calculus of GFS holds up today, under apparently burgeoning chaotic factors. In particular, these animations intend to sharpen questions about the model to inquiries such as "What, where, when, and how did the forecast miss, in this hand of the guessing game?"
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