Meteorology Eye of the Storm Book Review: Forecasting Is a Vital Bastion of International Co-operation

气象暴风眼：预报是国际合作的重要堡垒

In 1943 a German U-boat surreptitiously landed on the coast of Labrador, Canada’s frigid north-eastern peninsula. Under cover of fog, the crew quickly deposited ten large canisters, each labelled “Canadian Meteor Service”, on a nearby hill. Inside were nickel-cadmium batteries and ten-metre antennae – components of a clandestine weather station.

1943年，一艘德国U型潜艇在加拿大东北部寒冷的半岛拉布拉多（Labrador）某处偷偷登陆。在大雾的掩护下，船员们迅速将十个大罐子放在附近一座山上，罐子上均标有“加拿大气象服务”（Canadian Meteor Service）的字样。里面装的是一个秘密气象站所需的组件——镍镉电池和十米天线。

The landing by U-537 was the only known Nazi military operation on North American soil. It was an urgent, if risky, mission. Germany had been cut off from Allied-controlled weather-observation net-works, leaving its U-boats vulnerable to eastern-moving storms. The German weather service scrambled to develop new kit that could automatically transmit vital weather reports back to Berlin.

那次U-537潜艇登陆是纳粹在北美领土上唯一已知的军事行动。这是一次紧急行动，可能也很冒险。德国已被切断了从盟军控制的气象观测网络获得气象信息的途径，这让它的U型潜艇容易受到东向移动风暴的影响。德国气象机构匆忙开发了新装置，可将重要的气象信息自动传回柏林。

As Andrew Blum explains in “The Weather Machine”, his vivid account of the history and evolution of the modern daily forecast, conflict has always spurred innovation in atmospheric science. During the cold war, America raced to launch satellites that could spot a hurricane veering toward the Gulf of Mexico – or spy on Soviet weapons build-ups. Yet much as meteorologists thrive on competition, Mr Blum notes that weather prediction ultimately depends on global teamwork, facilitated by institutions such as the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation. Superstorms and cyclones rarely observe national borders.

冲突一直在推动着大气科学的创新，安德鲁·布鲁姆（Andrew Blum）在《气象机器》（The Weather Machine）一书中解释道。这本书对现代日常气象预报的历史和演变做了生动的叙述。冷战期间，美国一直加紧发射卫星，以探测飓风是否转向墨西哥湾——也能监视苏联集结武器的情况。然而，布鲁姆指出，尽管这种竞赛培养出了大批气象学家，气象预报最终还是要依赖联合国世界气象组织（World Meteorological Organisation）等机构推动的全球合作。超级风暴和气旋可不管国界划在哪里。

Like “Tubes”, Mr Blum’s book about the hidden infrastructure of the internet (published in 2012), “The Weather Machine” traces the “long supply chain of data” that produces the morning weather report. The smartphone weather app is “the handsome face of a complex and sprawling machine”, a vast operation encompassing awesome supercomputers, tens of thousands of observation stations and over 100 satellites. The book strips this forecasting engine down to its parts, revealing the people and places that keep the gears turning.

和布鲁姆关于互联网隐形基础设施的著述《管线》（Tubes，2012年出版）一样，《气象机器》追溯了生成每天早上天气预报的“长长的数据供应链”。智能手机上的天气应用是“复杂而庞大的机器的光鲜外表”，背后包括令人惊叹的超级计算机、成千上万的观测站和100多颗卫星。本书剥丝抽茧地拆解这部预测机器，揭示了令其齿轮保持正常运转的人和地点。

One of them is a lighthouse on top of a worryingly blustery hill on the tiny Norwegian island of Utsira. A weather station has operated there since the 1860s, after the telegraph made it possible to track weather patterns across long distances. A wide-reaching observation network was the first step toward weather prediction; the next was to input the data into a mathematical model of the atmosphere to produce short-term forecasts. But calculating future atmospheric conditions proved quite a practical challenge in the pre-digital age. Lewis Fry Richardson, an English physicist, estimated in 1922 that a global forecasting office would require 64,000 “computers” – that is, humans working with pencil and paper. “The scheme is complicated because the atmosphere is complicated,” Richardson admitted.

其中一个地方是挪威于特希拉小岛（Utsira）上的一座小山丘顶部的灯塔，这里常年狂风大作，令人心悸。自19世纪60年代起可以通过电报长距离追踪天气变化模式以来，这里就有一个气象站一直在运作。广泛的观测网络是实现天气预报的第一步；第二步是将数据输入到大气的数学模型中生成短期预测。但在数字时代之前，计算未来的大气状况实践起来挑战巨大。1922年，英国物理学家刘易斯·弗里·理查森（Lewis Fry Richardson）估计，一个全球性天气预报机构将需要6.4万台“计算机”——这里指的是用纸笔计算的人。“这个机制很复杂，因为大气本身就很复杂。”理查森说。

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts has developed a more streamlined system. It maintains two supercomputers that together carry out 90trn calculations per second. Visiting the centre’s modernist compound in Reading, England, Mr Blum watches one of these machines run a weather model from start to finish, spitting out a ten-day forecast in just over two hours. In 2012 the centre predicted Hurricane Sandy eight days in advance; by 2025 it aims to forecast such high-impact weather events with as much as two weeks’ warning.

欧洲中期天气预报中心（European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts）开发出了一个更精简的系统，由两台超级计算机组成，每秒可进行总共90万亿次计算。该预报中心位于英国雷丁市（Reading），是一组现代风格的建筑群。布鲁姆在参观该中心时，观看了其中一台超级计算机运行天气模型的全过程，短短两个多小时内就生成了未来十天的天气预报。2012年，该中心提前八天预报了飓风桑迪；到2025年，它的目标是能提前两周预报这类影响重大的天气事件。

Mr Blum runs through the early history of weather prediction before embarking on a grand tour of forecasting institutions across Europe and America. He is a sharp analyst and engaging guide, adept at translating difficult concepts in meteorology and computer science for the uninitiated. He compellingly emphasises the forecast’s diplomatic foundations. Weather prediction represents “a last bastion of international co-operation”, a global effort to warn of natural disasters that ravage crops and displace communities. As extreme weather events become more common, the weather report – a daily marvel on which lives and livelihoods depend – should not be taken for granted.

在梳理了天气预报的早期历史后，布鲁姆踏上了探访欧美天气预报机构的宏伟旅程。他是一位敏锐的分析师和有趣的向导，擅于深入浅出地向门外汉们解释气象学和计算机科学中的复杂概念。他令人信服地强调了天气预报中的外交基础。天气预报代表着“国际合作的最后一座堡垒”，是一项全球性工作，对毁坏作物、让人流离失所的自然灾害发出预警。随着极端天气事件越来越常见，天气预报这个生命和生计所依赖的日常奇迹不应被视为理所当然的存在。

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