Weather by the numbers

Winning entry, Professional Cover/Jacket Category, in the 2009 New England Book Show sponsored by Bookbuilders of Boston. and Winner, History Category, 2008 ASLI’s Choice Award given by the Atmospheric Science Librarians International. For much of the first half of the twentieth century, meteorology was more art than science, dependent on an individual forecaster’s lifetime of local experience. In Weather by the Numbers, Kristine Harper tells the story of the transformation of meteorology from a “guessing science” into a sophisticated scientific discipline based on physics and mathematics. What made this possible was the development of the electronic digital computer; earlier attempts at numerical weather prediction had foundered on the human inability to solve nonlinear equations quickly enough for timely forecasting.