Invisible in the Storm: The Role of Mathematics in Understanding Weather

Readable and informative, Invisible in the Storm is an important companion book for weather and climate scholars because it emphasizes an additional lens through which weather can be studied––the history of math. Invisible in the Storm is a mix of traditional academic prose and a series of “Tech Boxes,” which explain mathematical principles for non-mathematicians. The book spans from roughly 1700 to present-day computer modeling and prediction, profiling advances made by Newton, Bjerknes, Kelvin, Lewis Fry Richardson, and many others. The book moves chronologically through the origins of weather-lore and lore’s later replacement by physical laws (chapters 1 and 2), the advancement and application of graphical methods for modeling weather (chapter 3), an investigation of the variety and chaos of weather phenomenon that make forecasting difficult (chapter 4), and 1950s computer weather prediction (chapters 5 and 6), and finally more recent holistic principles for computer modeling (chapter 7). The final chapter, “Predicting in the Presence of Chaos,” operates as a reflection on the historical work done throughout the rest of the book: what has math offered and what might math continue to offer to the study of weather? According to Roulstone and Norbury, mathematics offers ways to “see the ever-changing weather patterns emerging from mists of chaos.” Math structures chaos; it locates and visualizes patterns that are too messy to be perceived by the naked eye.

Roulstone, Ian and John Norbury

Roulstone, Ian, and John Norbury. Invisible in the Storm: The Role of Mathematics in Understanding Weather.

Grossman, Sara

English

Book