Weather – Tell me what it feels like

Very few men have never looked at the sky admiring its beautiful creations with clouds of different shapes. Weather truly affects our lives, our mood, our well-being, our environment, and life conditions. But when talking of “weather” most of us mean a lot more than the current state of the atmosphere. Weather is a merger of impressions we’re collecting with all our senses. We can literally feel the weather on our skin and we react emotionally on the expectations and surprises it brings.

There is a special branch of science and business focusing on the atmosphere. It is called meteorology. As the word “meteorology” itself might sound a little dull to most of us I’d hereby like to defend its position as a famous (media) profession, shortly clarify its real purpose, and suggest what meteorology should occupy itself with besides the weather.

Why is that weather forecasts are usually treated as a special kind of information separated from the rest of the natural world? How come that when reading or watching a weather forecast there is always so much talk about the weather without mentioning its actual impacts on the environment and on us as beings? The reason is that someone invented the profession “meteorologist” and defined the knowledge a meteorologist should acquire in order to become a meteorologist and particular issues, tasks that are typically treated by, and phenomena that are analyzed by a meteorologist. In the wakes of the smartphone revolution the weather apps adopted the tradition of reporting and predicting the weather, and weather only, and while doing so they inherited some small flows created by the meteorologists when formulating the first weather reports, shaping the weather language, setting the foundation of today’s weather services.

For instance, in media and the million weather applications that have been created to serve you, you never hear of forecasts predicting the actual amounts of water on the ground. Instead you are told how many millimeters or inches are expected to fall from the sky. But what happens next? What is the actual outcome of the weather event, the rain hitting the ground surface? That is probably what you’d really like to know. You are interested to know how wet it’s going to get and how fast it is going to dry up. Or, you might be wondering how “hot” it will feel aside from the meteorologist or the app telling you the exact amount of degrees the thermometer is expected to reach on a specific day at a specific time.

Some progress has been made. Take for instance the widely used term “wind chill”. Wind chill is the cooling effect resulting from the wind chilling the human skin as it breaks down the thin layer of air continuously forming on the top of our skin heated by our body temperature. Because our body temperature is usually higher than the air temperature, we experience an imaginary reduction of the air temperature, the higher the wind speed the larger the effect. It simply “feels” a little chillier than the actual air temperature.

However, there are many other factors that substantially impact what the temperature feels like, one very important effect being represented by the source of all heat on the Earth – the Sun. The following comparison might illustrate the large difference between real air temperature and our (human) perception of air temperature. In winter, the Sun shines less brightly because the Sun emits less energy per area unit from where it is positioned relative to the horizon, namely a bit lower than during summertime. This can be described as less number of Sun rays being distributed over the spot where you are standing. During the summer, the Sun light will become more concentrated, the Sun will emit more energy per area unit, because it is positioned higher up on the sky, resulting in more energy hitting a particular surface, especially during the mid-day hours. This effect will effect your skin as well as you are standing and absorbing the rays emitted by the Sun at the particular spot where where you are standing. The perception of air temperature will be different in summer compared to winter and you will “feel” hotter standing unsheltered exposed to the Sun. This effect will perhaps not be notable during winter considering the generally lower temperatures and usually also (but not always) more clouds and stronger winds. However, try comparing what the Sun feels like on a hot day in June to a late summer equally hot August day, or a chilly December day to an equally cold day in early March. The difference should, if not striking, at least be evident!

One important reason is that meteorology measures, calculates, reports, and predicts, air temperature for a spot that is not exposed to Sun. As human beings, of course, we prefer knowing what the temperature feels like, independent of season and independent on the amount of clouds shading the Sun rays touching our skin. Air temperature is just a number, but what we feel is real.

Drawing from this, weather services should focus on providing weather information that is much more processed and adjusted to users actual needs. Weather service providers should explore the many opportunities to adjust content to a particular user, create new variables meeting special demands and needs issued by different lifestyles and activities, explore human perception of weather and how weather information can be fully personalized and individualized. ShareWeather has taken several steps in this direction towards more adjusted content, based on studying users perception of weather and weather information, and by creation new variables and algorithms handling new variables. We invite you to join us on this journey as a user of our services, or by participating as a partner or competitor on the market.

It is time to transform the weather forecasts from their currently very aged and traditional shape to a new exciting type of service that will actually tell the user what the weather will feel and look like!