SCIENCE AUTOMATIC WEATHER FORECASTING

By J. H. Bradley IN RECENT YEARS much attention has been paid to various types of electronic computing machine, in automatic control of machine tools, accounting. recording bookings for airline passengers. and many other fields.

These machines were developed largely because of the de- change. _ velopment of radar and. associated techniques. This article is concerned with the application of a digital computer to weather forecasting.

It has been knewn for many years that the quantities used in meteorology—temperature. pressure. humidity, ete——were connected by certain fairly simply differential equations.

If these could be solved, they would give a weather forecast starting from any given conditions.

The solution was in fect well known. but so tedious te apply that humans coula not keep up with the weather, It vould take two days to work out tomorrow's weather!

SALSBERG (Continued from previous page)

and militant position against manifestations of backwardness This often leads to acts that are essentially discriminatory.

Why. for example. is there no official declaration regardi Stalin’s anti-Jewish actions?

Js it because other Soviet peoples will ask why the government issues a special declaration only about Jews? J] cannot be content with this reply. uM I asked why il is that passports and other personal documents of Jewish citizens are marked “Yevrei’ Gew). When I asked how this practice squares with the statement that most Jews were fully integrated, J got no clear or satisfactory answer, I inquired why Pravda had omitted the reference to Jewish writers from its reprint of Eugene Dennis’ article.* One of the editors of this Soviet paper replied that this was done because it was a ‘controversial question in the USSR’ Now what kind of an excuse is this? Since when does Pravda fear to handle controversial questions?

At one of the official sessions I inquired about Madame Furtseva’s famous interview with the National Guardian. I quoted from the Guardian those sections in which Mme. Furtmethods have been developed in Dunstable and Moscow for using such machines.

One of the series of special computers under construction by the USSR Academy of Sciences is called ‘Weather’.

The solutions can only be approximate, but are usually rather better than so-called experience, especially under diflicult conditions.

Thus the Meteorological Office has been known to forecast continued fine weather for a Bank Holiday, when the computer correctly showed rain, Conditions had been static for some days, and nobody could tell when they would begin to The method used is to make the machine work out the sseather say three hours ahead. using the situation at the moment. The three-hour forecast is used as a basis for a six hour forecast. and so on.

Since the computer works only in terms of numbers (arithmetic). not in terms of variables (algebraic functions). it cannot use all the information available on a map.

A cold front might be given by specifying ten points through which it passed. Thus the results can only be approximate. though this may be less serious than the fact that there is only a finite number of measuring stations to start with.

This example is not only in my opinion a slap in the face to the four eliminated Jewish students: it is also a eriticism of those responsible for the Soviet Union's nationalities policy.

‘The explanation is full of colossal contradictions. How does it tally with the ‘integration’ theory and the concept that Jews ‘are expressing themselves in the culture of the people among whom they live?

This was the explanation every time I asked why full opportunities were not provided for a rebirth of Jewish culture.

Who examined. and why. the chosen student from Minsk. Moscow or Kiev. to find out if he was a hundred per cent White Russian. Great Russian or Ukrainian or if he was only a Jewish White Russian, Jewish Great Russian or Jewish Ukrainian? Are there two classes of citizens in the Soviet republics?

In my opinion such practices are in complete contradiction with the most elementary concepts of socialist equality. In my opinion this is an example of inconsistency and of a-catering to the most backward elements in Soviet society, And in my opinion it is a form of discrimination that must be fought. exposed and eliminated.