A History of Numerical Weather Prediction

Abstract

 This paper covers the principal milestones in Numerical Weather Prediction from the “beginning” to the present day and is divided into three main sections. First the beginning which, in my view, was L. F. Richardson’s (1922) book on Weather Prediction by Numerical Processes following some earlier work by Bjerknes. The second section is devoted to the theoretical and practical studies which were started by Charney and his colleagues at Princeton University at the end of World War II with the advent of electronic computers and which have continued in many centres up to the present day. The final section deals with the introduction of NWP into operational forecasting and some personal reminiscences of those involved in the early days.