NY Times hails United Nations weather forecasting and Olympics involvement

From NY Times, Vancouver: "“If you look at the globe, there are more scientists in warm countries,” he said. “Even in the U.S. they focus on summer, not winter.” (said Environment Canada scientist George Isaac)...

• As Vancouver winds down, Sochi, Russia, the host of the 2014 Winter Games, is gearing up. A team of

• Russian meteorologists has been visiting the Vancouver operation to form its plans."

(According to a recent NY Times article, the Russian winter games will be held in a subtropical location).

• NY Times, continuing: "Perhaps more important,

• the data gathered by forecasters for the Olympics,

and the instruments used to record them, will ultimately be used to determine more than ski wax selections for skiers.

• The forecasting system is part of a United Nations-sponsored program to improve the

• accuracy

and availability of short-term, winter storm forecasting, ...Trevor Smith, who coordinates the special forecasting through a NASA-style bank of oversized computer monitors at an office in downtown Vancouver, said that the first step was

• retraining the Olympic forecasters (three of whom are on loan from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• in the United States)....

The Winter Olympics and the coming Paralympic Games here have generally not been blessed with wintry weather. But an elaborate weather forecasting service that has been operating for nearly four years meant that the

• unwelcome conditions were not a surprise.*...

• While two Summer Games have been used for special projects by the World Meteorological Organization,
• a United Nations agency,
• these were the first Winter Games it has studied.

George Isaac, the Environment Canada scientist who sold the idea of using the Olympics as a case study

• to governments and researchers in several countries including the United States,

• said that the hope was to improve “now casting” of rapidly developing storms or dangerous winter weather conditions. Such forecasts, which cover from an immediate time period out six hours, have been used to track the development of
• summer storms like tornados for many years.

• But Isaac said that there was little similar science for winter conditions."...

• NY Times, 3/11/10, "Winter Games Yield Forecasting Insights," by Ian Austen

*If they knew years ago Vancouver wasn't suitable for Winter sports, why was it treated as a catastrophic, dramatic news story blanketing the media complaining it must be global warming? Even Mike Richter and the US president used their pulpit to sell this obviously fake catastrophe. ed.

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