The Weather Machine, Andrew Blum
The Weather Machine, Andrew Blum
2 Rating(s)
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The Weather Machine
A Journey Inside the Forecast

Author: Andrew Blum

Narrator: Greg Tremblay

Unabridged: 4 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 06/25/2019


Synopsis

From the acclaimed author of Tubes, a lively and surprising tour of the infrastructure behind the weather forecast, the people who built it, and what it reveals about our climate and our planetThe weather is the foundation of our daily lives. It’s a staple of small talk, the app on our smartphones, and often the first thing we check each morning. Yet behind these quotidian interactions is one of the most expansive machines human beings have ever constructed—a triumph of science, technology and global cooperation. But what is this ‘weather machine’ and who created it? In The Weather Machine, Andrew Blum takes readers on a fascinating journey through an everyday miracle. In a quest to understand how the forecast works, he visits old weather stations and watches new satellites blast off. He follows the dogged efforts of scientists to create a supercomputer model of the atmosphere and traces the surprising history of the algorithms that power their work. He discovers that we have quietly entered a golden age of meteorology—our tools allow us to predict weather more accurately than ever, and yet we haven’t learned to trust them, nor can we guarantee the fragile international alliances that allow our modern weather machine to exist.Written with the sharp wit and infectious curiosity Andrew Blum is known for, The Weather Machine pulls back the curtain on a universal part of our everyday lives, illuminating our relationships with technology, the planet, and the global community. 

About Andrew Blum

Andrew Blum is a journalist and the author of Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, the first book-length look at the physical infrastructure of the Internet. Tubes has been translated into ten languages, and has become a crucial reference for journalists, politicians, and entrepreneurs eager to understand how the Internet works. Blum’s writing about architecture, design, technology, urbanism, art, and travel has appeared in numerous publications, including Wired, Popular Science, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times.


Reviews

as someone who works in meteorological data collection this was a fun read. My biggest complaint is go deeper! I'm here dude go fuckin all in. It reads like a long form internet article of "isn't this stuff cool!" which like it is, and the brevity of it made it really crushable and interesting. But......more

One of our oldest desires is knowing the weather. And we gradually raised our expectations on fulfilment of this desire. Niels Bohr has famously said: "Predictions are very difficult, especially if they are about the future". Especially for the weather, they were extremely difficult just a century a......more

Goodreads review by Pete

The Weather Machine : A Journey Inside the Forecast (2019) by Andrew Blum explores how modern weather forecasts are made. Blum is a journalist who has written for The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and Wired and various other magazines. The Weather Machine picks a subject that is more incredibl......more

This one was good. I was afraid it was gonna be dry, but it really wasn't. Could have had a little more link with big storms and forecasting, but overall, it was a good read.......more