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THE EMERGENCE OF NUMERICAL WEATHER PREDICTION: RICHARDSON'S DREAM Peter Lynch, 2006, 279 pp., $75.00, hardbound, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-85729-5
Following George Platzman's historical study of Lewis Fry Richardson and his classic treatise, Weather Prediction by Numerical Process, many meteorologists have been stimulated and captivated by the aura of Richardson. And, indeed, in the past several decades there have been a series of articles and books on the man and his work. Thus, when I was invited to review Peter Lynch's contribution to this subject, I wondered: What more can be added? Nevertheless, I was optimistic, since Lynch is a solid theoretician who has never lost sight of the importance of weather forecasting.
Lynch's knowledge of advances in dynamical meteorology and operational numerical weather prediction (NWP), along with his scholarly acquisition of historical information, has led to a valued expansion and elaboration on Platzman's work. Additionally, Lynch has reappraised Richardson's work through his own numerical experiments. The book is not biographical; rather, it concentrates on Richardson's calculation-his forecast, or more precisely, his calculation of the tendencies of the meteorological variables at two points near Munich, Germany on 20 May 1910 (0700 GMT). With this...