As a weatherman, I have a very nice job that, I think, meets an important need. I always hope that people like that someone makes a coherent story from a collection of boring numbers. I try to let the numbers live and give them a feeling. I use language, the good words, to give meaning to bare numbers and simple symbols. It makes meteorology a beautiful blueprint of science communication. Science behind it is nature and mathematics. But it is the communication that determines the effectiveness of the scientific result.
Let’s face it, a weatherman who comes to TV and radio at a few fixed times, that has a little old -week. Moreover, it is only suitable for the weather forecast in the medium -sized term, say for the period between 6 am and a few days ahead. I can’t start anything with expectations in the even longer term. There is not enough information for the viewer. A weather forecast for in three weeks has no practical significance because it is too general: “a slightly increased chance of wetter weather than average.”
Strangely enough, I can’t get along well with the weather forecast for the very short term. Then there is far too much information. I cannot say that in a weather forecast for the general public. Take some rain for a day with spread over the country. If I want to communicate something about the weather in two hours, I need way too much detail. This mainly plays on the radio: “In Hellendoorn, Raalte, Dalfsen and Ommen it is raining in two hours, but in Zwolle, Kampen, Epe and Hoogeveen it will be dry by that time.”
The amount of detail that you can give is also limited on TV. I often use an animation of radar images, but actually this goes way too fast for a viewer to get meaningful information from it. You have to let your gaze go back and forth at lightning speed between a clock and a card to find out when it rains. As a former colleague at the NOS it once expressed: TV is totally unsuitable for information transfer.
Very nice estimate
The personalized weather forecast was jumped in the hole of the short -term weather, and that started with Buienradar in 2006. You show you where it rains in the Netherlands, and how the rain moves over the country. Based on that you can make a very nice estimate about the rain in the next two or three hours. Buienradar offers all information, and you can find out for yourself which part of that information you use. A personalized information model in which a weatherman or weather woman only provides moderately.
Not only is expectation in the very short term difficult for the weatherman. It also pinches in communication with the weather warnings. Code yellow, orange, red. At the moment they are issued per province. For some types of warnings that works pretty well, especially for weather conditions that are the same over larger areas. Like heavy gusts of wind. But for many weather symptoms, those provincial boundaries actually make no sense. If there are a few sampling of flooding in the Achterhoek, the entire province of Gelderland is placed on code orange, to Zaltbommel. The weather alarm for the Pinkpopbuien in South Limburg in 2014? The whole province on code red, while it was clear that nothing special was going to happen in Venray. Fortunately it was not so bad on Pinkpop, a little further in Germany fell six people.
Heavy gusts and ice
The provincial borders pinch, and that is why communication about the weather warnings will change radically in the coming years. The KNMI is working behind the scenes to publish warnings at the post -code level. For example, for heavy gusts of wind and ice, that is not difficult and very practical. You can use it to indicate right through provinces where the weather is and is not dangerous. For heavy thunderstorms, work is being done on a system that follows individual showers and tries to estimate what their course is and how they will develop. Once that technique is good enough, you can warn against sub -style streets in Doetinchem instead of the whole of Gelderland.
Digital resources and the weatherman will probably strengthen each other in communicating weather warning. The weatherman and his news organization can use their reach to quickly inform people. An app or website can then give you a detailed personal overview for your location. New technology and new communication can improve the effectiveness of weather warning, reduce the number of incorrectly warned people, and further increase trust in the warnings. Technology and communication also go hand in hand in the future of meteorology, as it has been for decades.
Peter Kuipers Munneke is a glaciologist at Utrecht University and Weatherman at the NOS