Forecasting the foliage
Mar. 15th, 2007 10:30 amIt seems as though the good folks at JMA have apologised for a bug in their weather model that caused them to get the sakura forecast wrong. I sympathise with our Japanese colleagues.
Years ago, when I used to go to such things, I went to a seminar given by a scientist from JMA who, when he put a slide describing the various limited area models run by the agency, sighed and looked downcast. He examined the areas again and said, "As you can see, our mesoscale model area is very large. This is because the Japanese archipelago is very long and we have to run it along the diagonal. This is why we have to buy such large supercomputers. But at least it keeps our colleagues at Hitachi happy..."
Years ago, when I used to go to such things, I went to a seminar given by a scientist from JMA who, when he put a slide describing the various limited area models run by the agency, sighed and looked downcast. He examined the areas again and said, "As you can see, our mesoscale model area is very large. This is because the Japanese archipelago is very long and we have to run it along the diagonal. This is why we have to buy such large supercomputers. But at least it keeps our colleagues at Hitachi happy..."