NCAR Historical Visualizations
Lewis Fry Richardson published Weather Prediction by Numerical Process in 1922. He imagined a stadium filled with people, each equipped with a mechanical calculator and tasked with calculating a small part of the overwhelmingly large problem, and this symphony of calculation would perhaps lead to an answer to the problem.
With the arrival of early supercomputers, researchers found the answer and began formulating the first electronic computations of the global climate system, building largely upon the equations developed by Dr. Richardson. It wasn't long after when the pioneers in this endeavor wanted to visualize their results. Here are some samples of their early work, done on film, showcasing the first thirty years of numerical computation of our Earth System.
| Leith, 1960s |
Early NCAR visualizations were based on pioneering work done at Lawrence Livermore National Lab by Chuck Leith where he created the world’s first computer generated animations of atmospheric simulations. See related article here.
Geopotential Height |
Surface Pressure |
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| Washington,
Kasahara, O'Lear, 1967-69 |
In 1965, Warren Washington and Akira Kasahara began developing a numerical global climate model building largely upon Dr. Richardson's work (1922). They published their first paper on this work in 1967 in "The Monthly Weather Review". It was entitled "NCAR Global General Circulation Model of the Atmosphere". At about the same time, they began working with Bernie O'Lear on visualizing the results and recording it to film on Dicomed film recorders. They used some clever techniques, like rendering precipitable water to look like clouds by defocusing the camera.
Global Model |
July Simulation of the Monsoon Circulation over
the Afro-Indian Region - Precipitable Water |
Sea Surface Temperature |
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Dr. Warren Washington is now the leader of the Climate Change Research Section in NCAR's Climate and Global Dynamics Division (CGD) and a member of the U.S. National Science Board. Dr. Kasahara is a retired associate scientist with CGD. Bernie O'Lear, now retired, was Associate Director of NCAR's Scientific Computing Division.
| Anthes,
1975 |
In 1975, Dr. Richard Anthes developed one of the first multi-layer numerical hurricane models. He also set forth to visualize his model results, but used a somewhat different approach than the early climate modelers. Rick produced a large sequence of printouts, each page representing a single time step from his model. By hand, he registered each printout on a table and photographed it, thus producing a film animation of his simulation. Dr. Richard Anthes is now the President of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). |
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