The Forecast Factory: Page 8

Extensions to Other Subjects

Another attribute of Richardson's Forecast Factory vision is that it can be extended easily to scientific endeavors other than weather forecasting.

Global Climate Modeling

Global climate modeling — a subject of prime interest here at GISS — also lends itself to play-acting. Some adjustments are involved, however. GCMs do not rely on the split-second relay of real-time weather data. Instead, GCMs are usually initialized with long-term climatologies of global temperatures, and are used to test the sensitivity of the model's "climate" to large changes in the atmospheric composition, e.g. a doubling of carbon dioxide (CO₂). Below are a few suggestions for how to use the Richardson approach to explain how a GCM works.

Given the complexity of a GCM, one play-acting approach would be to expand the emphasis on the model versus the Richardson weather-forecasting example above. One part of the room could play-act the radiation code in a GCM, another part could simulate the dynamics code, and yet another part could imitate the connections between the oceans and the atmosphere in a coupled atmosphere-ocean GCM.

The effect of atmospheric composition on Earth's radiation budget could be demonstrated by having students role-play various atmospheric gases, such as oxygen, ozone, water vapor, and CO₂ — two students per gas, one for the incoming solar radiation code, the other for the outgoing infrared radiation code. One student holding a flashlight could role-play the sun, while another student beaming a red light could stand in for Earth's infrared emission to space. The gas role-players could hold clear kitchen wrap over the light to indicate that a gas did not absorb in a particular case, or could drape a blanket over the red-light-holding student if they were role-playing a "greenhouse gas."

Simultaneously, the instructor could perform a real-life demonstration of radiation absorption by placing a beaker of dry ice and a beaker of water ice in a microwave and running the oven for three minutes. Will both chunks of ice turn to liquid or gas? Why or why not? How does the ice receive energy from the microwave oven? How is the microwave oven similar to — and different from — the Sun or Earth's surface? This true experiment, imbedded in the middle of play-acting, can help to link the abstractions of kitchen wrap and blankets to the more complex reality of radiation absorption by trace atmospheric constituents.

The Galileo Mission to Jupiter

I am currently collaborating with the Office of Educational Outreach at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory concerning how to use the Richardson play-acting approach to teach students about the Galileo mission to Jupiter. The complex interactions between science and engineering which lead to a successful planetary mission are very similar to the symphony of observations and modeling Richardson envisaged for meteorology. Stay tuned for further information about our attempt to bring the Galileo mission alive in the classroom! (Contact Rebecca Westbrook for more information on this educational outreach project.)

Discussion of Technique

The four-act Forecast Factory play is a time-intensive teaching technique, but is infinitely adaptable depending upon the instructor's interests, the number of students, and the availability of props and classroom space. Although it has been used at the introductory college level, the approach is ideal for younger students as well.

One unusual aspect of this experiment is that it seems to work best with relatively large class sizes. Based on my experience, due to the large number of roles the Forecast Factory play works best with roughly 50-75 participants, unlike many other alternatives to the lecture. In this sense the Forecast Factory play blends the efficiency of the traditional lecture technique with the raised interest level of active learning approaches.

Summary

L.F. Richardson's Forecast Factory fantasy has been a guiding paradigm for weather forecasting for over 80 years. Its symphonic sense of the intertwined aspects of forecasting contains deep truths about atmospheric science and continues to inspire researchers today (McIntyre 1988). Meteorology students should learn about Richardson and his vision, and the ideal way to do so is to bring it to life in the classroom.

The play-acting approach inspired by Richardson also holds great promise for conveying other complex scientific efforts to students, such as global climate modeling and the exploration of other planets in our solar system.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Steve Silberberg at Northern Illinois University for collaborating on this educational vision. Thanks also to Wisconsin State Climatologist Pam Naber Knox for helping make this experiment a reality; Steve Ackerman of the University of Wisconsin-Madison for lending students and support to this endeavor; Fleming Crim, chemistry professor at Wisconsin, for providing the inspiration for the ice/dry ice experiment mentioned in the discussion of GCMs; and to the students themselves for their enthusiastic participation! The discussion presented here is adapted from Knox and Silberberg (1997).

References

• Ahrens, C. D. 1994. Meteorology Today. 5th ed. West.
• Knox, J.A., and S.R. Silberberg 1997. L.F. Richardson's Forecast Factory: An active learning experiment in four acts. In Preprints, 6th Symposium on Education, February 2-7, 1997, Long Beach, California. American Meteorological Society, Boston.
• Lynch, P. 1992. Richardson's barotropic forecast: A reappraisal. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc. 73, 35-47.
• McIntyre, M.E. 1988. The use of potential vorticity and low-level temperature/moisture to understand extratropical cyclogenesis. In Seminar Proceedings, The Nature and Prediction of Extratropical Weather Systems. European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts, 7-11 Sept 1987.
• Richardson, L.F. 1922. Weather Prediction by Numerical Process. Cambridge Univ. Press.

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