weather engines - and now for something completely different

[sightseer]

I thought Id start a topic just for this instead of hijacking the OPUS weather engine thread.

Ive put a bit of thought into how I would design a weather engine. The entire job of a simulator is to produce a believable

recreation of reality. It cannot be perfect. There are too many variables and we dont collect data on all of them...nor could we...and even if we did, where would we store it? how would we transfer/translate it? We digitize our recreation of reality and our data is incomplete.

So the best we can do in my opinion is fudge the numbers to look right. We cant stick to the numbers because our interpretation may not be (often isnt) perfect. I think we want things to appear correct rather than appear incorrect because we insisted that the correct data be plugged into an incorrect interpreter (program - simulator).

So, with weather...here in the US the METARS are updated once an hour or every fifteen minutes when 'rapidly changing weather' is present. Accurate data doesnt exist for every location all over the world. There are giant holes. Most

of New Zealand seems to exist in one of these unfortunately.

It isnt possible to create accurate weather for the entire world because accurate data doesnt exist for the entire world.

We have to fudge the numbers.

If I were creating a weather engine, I would create a fictitious set of weather stations. It would consist of real and fake weather stations. I would look to real weather data including sky cover to create the weather and then I would use forecast data to morph the weather over time. This is what I thought REX did. I thought the whole interpolation thing was this notion of creating fake weather stations but theres something not working and Im not sure what.

There is a problem with the concept of "always having accurate or up to date weather". The weather will change and you simply cannot know what its going to change to. But you can guess and you can also make sure that all changes to the weather sim occur in an area where you are not currently located. Forecast models are pretty good for short term changes.

But Im not sure there is any way to have up to date accurate weather where you are without putting up with the 'and now for something completely different' effect. I wish there was and I hope there is.

Can you think of any way? OPUS is apparently working on it. I wish them great luck! May they be given the answer to the riddle becuase I dont know what the answer might be.

anyway...this is just a bunch of words to start a topic. any thoughts? Please post.

[sightseer]

OK, so...I just found the 'Weather (Cloud) Smoothing' topic at a forum Im probably not supposed to mention...so ignore this. It can be discussed there. No need for us to have any discussion here.