At one time TR397 would have campaigned for dropping the word “meteorology”, (the scientific study of the Earth’s atmosphere), and replacing it with “climatology”, the more correct, less confusing word. No one is sure where “meteorology” came from. But there are just too many archived documents that use the word to change it now.
Someone wanting to do weather forecasting must first study the Earth’s climate systems. It is the Earth’s climate systems that cause the weather. A person with a degree in meteorology is a climatologist. Pilots need the weather but must study climate first.
Most professionals labor on land or sea. The professional pilot’s playground is the atmosphere - chaotic and unpredictable - no matter how big your computer is.
Not all goes well all the time and pilots must deal with that.
"Thornton Wilder Quotes." BrainyQuote.com. BrainyMedia Inc, 2021. 18 June 2021. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/thornton_wilder_151997
1984 MD-80 radar and outside view. It is nice to see the storm but not necessary with radar.
The photo vividly makes a point. The only answer to why one side of the street is destroyed while the other side survives is the chance coincidence of natural forces. Like the tornado track here, hurricane tracks are also function of our chaotic atmosphere. Only by a chance encounter with human habitation is one newsworthy! What side of the street you bought your house on has nothing to do with climate!
Sadly, like many advancements in technology, war was the motivation and driving force to develop a system to detect and track ships and airplanes at a distance. Many countries were working on a mechanism but for the UK it was a matter of survival. Early in World War II, physicists in England invented the magnetron, a small device capable of generating very high radio frequencies at high power.
RADAR, (Radio Detection and Ranging), can be used to detect storms. Like all technology, radar gets better and better. At first the displays were monochrome. Color radar was better and now doppler radar can detect rotation in a storm.
Please be careful on this one. Be nice.
The Boeing 767 has the radar superimposed on the “Horizontal Situation Indicator”. The magenta line is our planned flight path which would take us through severe storms northeast of Denver. We turn left to avoid the weather. This photo was taken June 1986. The 767 is still flying but newer planes have even more sophisticated displays.
Five specific hurricanes are analyzed.
Vertical movement of the air. including a satellite view of the Earth.
CLIMATE