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Margules's tendency equation and Richardson's forecast
Author(s) -
Lynch Peter
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
weather
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.467
H-Index - 40
eISSN - 1477-8696
pISSN - 0043-1656
DOI - 10.1256/wea.146.02
Subject(s) - citation , history , library science , computer science
Max Margules contributed a short paper for the Festschrift published in 1904 to mark the sixti- eth birthday of his former teacher, the renowned physicist Ludwig Boltzmann. Margules con- sidered the possibility of predicting pressure changes by means of the continuity equation. He showed that, to obtain an accurate estimate of the pressure tendency, the winds would have to be known to a precision quite beyond the practical limit. He concluded that any attempt to forecast synoptic changes by this means was doomed to failure. We re-examine the numerical weather forecast made by Lewis Fry Richardson in the light of Margules' findings. Richardson employed the method which Margules had shown to be prob- lematical; as a result, his prediction was com- pletely unrealistic. It appears that Richardson was unaware of Margules' paper, although a copy was received by the Met Office Library in 1905.