Skip to main content

Slashdot: How The Advance Weather Forecast Got Good

How The Advance Weather Forecast Got Good
Published on July 01, 2019 at 04:04AM
NPR notes today's "supercomputer-driven" weather modelling can crunch huge amounts of data to accurately forecast the weather a week in advance -- pointing out that "a six-day weather forecast today is as good as a two-day forecast was in the 1970s." Here's some highlights from their interview with Andrew Blum, author of The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast : One of the things that's happened as the scale in the system has shifted to the computers is that it's no longer bound by past experience. It's no longer, the meteorologists say, "Well, this happened in the past, we can expect it to happen again." We're more ready for these new extremes because we're not held down by past expectations... The models are really a kind of ongoing concern. ... They run ahead in time, and then every six hours or every 12 hours, they compare their own forecast with the latest observations. And so the models in reality are ... sort of dancing together, where the model makes a forecast and it's corrected slightly by the observations that are coming in... It's definitely run by individual nations -- but individual nations with their systems tied together... It's a 150-year-old system of governments collaborating with each other as a global public good... The positive example from last month was with Cyclone Fani in India. And this was a very similar storm to one 20 years ago, that tens of thousands of people had died. This time around, the forecast came far enough in advance and with enough confidence that the Indian government was able to move a million people out of the way.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Slashdot: US Army Soldier Pleads Guilty To AT&T and Verizon Hacks

US Army Soldier Pleads Guilty To AT&T and Verizon Hacks Published on February 20, 2025 at 01:31AM Cameron John Wagenius pleaded guilty to hacking AT&T and Verizon and stealing a massive trove of phone records from the companies, according to court records filed on Wednesday. From a report: Wagenius, who was a U.S. Army soldier, pleaded guilty to two counts of "unlawful transfer of confidential phone records information" on an online forum and via an online communications platform. According to a document filed by Wagenius' lawyer, he faces a maximum fine of $250,000 and prison time of up to 10 years for each of the two counts. Wagenius was arrested and indicted last year. In January, U.S. prosecutors confirmed that the charges brought against Wagenius were linked to the indictment of Connor Moucka and John Binns, two alleged hackers whom the U.S. government accused of several data breaches against cloud computing services company Snowflake, which were among the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Slashdot: AT&T Now Lets Customers Lock Down Account To Prevent SIM Swapping Attacks

AT&T Now Lets Customers Lock Down Account To Prevent SIM Swapping Attacks Published on July 02, 2025 at 01:30AM AT&T has launched a new Account Lock feature designed to protect customers from SIM swapping attacks. The security tool, available through the myAT&T app, prevents unauthorized changes to customer accounts including phone number transfers, SIM card changes, billing information updates, device upgrades, and modifications to authorized users. SIM swapping attacks occur when criminals obtain a victim's phone number through social engineering techniques, then intercept messages and calls to access two-factor authentication codes for sensitive accounts. The attacks have become increasingly common in recent years. AT&T began gradually rolling out Account Lock earlier this year, joining T-Mobile, Verizon, and Google Fi, which already offer similar fraud prevention features. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Post a Comment
Read more

Slashdot: Protecting 'Funko' Brand, AI-Powered 'BrandShield' Knocks Itch.io Offline After Questionable Registrar Communications

Protecting 'Funko' Brand, AI-Powered 'BrandShield' Knocks Itch.io Offline After Questionable Registrar Communications Published on December 16, 2024 at 01:04AM Launched in 2013, itch.io lets users host and sell indie video games online — now offering more than 200,000 — as well as other digital content like music and comics. But then someone uploaded a page based on a major videogame title, according to Game Rant. And somehow this provoked a series of overreactions and missteps that eventually knocked all of itch.io offline for several hours... The page was about the first release from game developer 10:10 — their game Funko Fusion, which features characters in the style of Funko's long-running pop-culture bobbleheads. As a major brand, Funko monitors the web with a "brand protection" partner (named BrandShield). Interestingly, BrandShield's SaaS product "leverages AI-driven online brand protection," according to their site, to "detect...
Post a Comment
Read more