Question

WILL FAN + MEDAL!!!!

How can we use the relationships among weather data to produce a forecast?

Answer 1

Until the invention of the telegraph, weather forecasting was only a gathering of rules based on observations like, "red sky at night, sailor's delight," etc.
The telegraph enabled us to gather many observations from many places and draw what is called, a synoptic map, a snapshot of the present situation. When the wireless radio came on board of vessels and remote places, at the beginning of the 20th century, things became clearer and we noticed the polar front and the tropical cyclones. Then came stratospheric aircraft and we learned about the jet streams and then came satellites and we could e.g. measure the altitude of the clouds by their temperature.

Answer 2

Until the invention of the telegraph, weather forecasting was only a gathering of rules based on observations like, "red sky at night, sailor's delight," etc.
The telegraph enabled us to gather many observations from many places and draw what is called, a synoptic map, a snapshot of the present situation. When the wireless radio came on board of vessels and remote places, at the beginning of the 20th century, things became clearer and we noticed the polar front and the tropical cyclones. Then came stratospheric aircraft and we learned about the jet streams and then came satellites and we could e.g. measure the altitude of the clouds by their temperature.

While being the first and truly international cooperation, the gathering of weather observations is now the task of the World Meteorological Organization, a division of the U.N.

Those data are then redistributed to national authorities like the NOAA in the USA and those are fed to compute models like the Global Forecast System. The forecast coming out if it is then made available to forecast providers that tailor them to the need of their customers. For example, the aviator would like to know the cloud ceiling while the seafarer would rather know the expected wave height.