Inventions
Alex Bäcker
1 min readThe author argues that traditional binary weather forecasts, such as the probability of rain, are ineffective for tropical climates and proposes a more granular system based on the estimated fraction of the day that it will rain or shine.
Most weather forecasts, such as weather.com's, summarize the forecast with one number: the probability of rain. Yet this weather forecast is completely inappropriate for tropical places, as they say everyday has 100% probability of rain just because at some point or another a brief refreshing shower will briefly interrupt the sun. I propose a more meaningful replacement: the estimated fraction of the day (from dawn to midnight, as past-midnight showers are much less relevant to the majority of the population) that it will rain, and the expected fraction of the day (from dusk to dawn) that the sun will shine.