15. Weather Tracking and Forecasting

Photo 27: Infra Red Weather Map of Canada from the GOES-WEST Satalite.
Image from the Environment Canada weather website. 2011-06-30

Weather forecasting

Meteorology, the systematic study of short term weather phenomenon, has improved its science a lot over the last decennia. Yet during my visit to the Environment Canada office in Edmonton, I was surprised to see how much guesswork weather forecasting still is in this modern age. Meteorology is an art as well as a science.

Weather tracking

Canada has hundreds of weather stations, from which 290 have been around for more than 30 years already. They are the so-called climate stations, stations that have been around long enough to measure long-term climate patterns as well as current weather systems. Environment Canada also uses radiosondes, balloons with weather measuring equipment on board. Canada has 37 radiosondes stations, which measure twice daily (noon and midnight). Many current weather mapping is done with satellites. Polar orbiting satellites orbit around the earth at about 1100 km high and take images of the earth. Other satellites have a geosynchronous orbit, which means they hover above one spot on the Earth. GOES-11 (or GOES-WEST) and GOES-13 (or GOES-EAST) (Geostationary Orbiting Environmental Satellite) are two North-American satellites used for weather mapping. The textbook refers to GOES-10 and 12, but these ones are inactive according to the NASA website. During our fieldtrip to the Environment Canada office (photo 28) we saw many weather images including some images from the GOES-WEST Satellite (photo 27).

Photo 28: Environment Canada weather office. 2011-05-06