It’s easy to take modern weather prediction technology and warning systems for granted, but the new advancements save lives.
The UK has recorded its hottest ever temperature, passing 40℃ for the first time. But you can’t deny it had fair warning. The Met Office issued an amber weather warning six days before the heatwave and upgraded it to red three days later, enough time to trade cooling-down tips with friends and stock up on ice lollies.
The high pressures that drive heatwaves are a little easier to predict with older models, as the physics limits the changes possible over distance. So I expect an extreme heat event would have been predicted a few days ahead even in 1987 . As computers improve, they can make meteorological calculations faster. The grid and time-steps can be smaller. The modern numerical model uses a grid smaller than a kilometre between points over the UK . In 1987 weather forecasters used a global grid of points 150km apart.
Satellite data brought southern hemisphere forecasts up to a similar accuracy to those the northern hemisphere. Previously, southern hemisphere forecasts often had a day’s less lead time.
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