Choosing a Subject:
As an intel airman, the most important part of our work was often the briefing of our findings to decision makers. This gave me a lasting interest in the work of conveying complex technical data and historical trend analysis to laymen. As I examine potential applications of this specific skill set, I saw this project as an opportunity to examine the application of it in the field of meteorology. While setting up my timeline, I happened to find the work of another student who had already done this assignment on the same subject matter, thus I pivoted the focus of my project to examining the work of conveying weather information to the public.
Sources/Datasets
Sources/Datasets:
My main sources for this work were articles from the Storm Prediction Center at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Royal Meteorological Society as well as The Weather Channel.
The tool I used to create the timeline is TimelineJS, an open-source tool that can be used to visualized a custom google spreadsheet. I found the tool to be simple, effective and easy to use.
Method:
I originally started assembling the project intending to just cover the different forms of weather visualization throughout history. After changing focus, I wanted to highlight the change in weather visualization that I thought most people would recognize: television. Using google searches, I was able to find primary source articles from the NOAA and The Weather Channel about their earliest implementations of certain significant technologies in the field of meteorology.
Reflections:
I feel like I took too long to narrow down the subject of my project. Over the course of putting this timeline together, I’ve tried to focus on a broad overview of all weather visualization, severe weather warning, and finally broadcast meteorology. The final project here has artifacts of each attempted focus, and it was difficult to construct a cohesive narrative between the slides. In future projects, I will approach the work with a storyline in mind at the start so that I can guide my research along a more definite path.
Bibliography:
- (2023). Noaa.gov. https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/doppler.gif
- Doppler Radar (Online Tornado FAQ). (n.d.). Www.spc.noaa.gov. https://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/doppler.htm
- The History and Future of Broadcast Meteorology. (2017, March 27). IWeatherNet. https://www.iweathernet.com/educational/history-broadcast-meteorology
- US Department of Commerce, N. O. and A. A. (n.d.). Transformations: Weather, Water, and Climate Forecasts and Warnings. Celebrating200years.noaa.gov. https://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/transformations/weather/radar.html
- Keeling, S. J. (2010). Visualization of the weather-past and present. Meteorological Applications, 17(2), 126–133. https://doi.org/10.1002/met.208
- A Brief History of the Storm Prediction Center. (n.d.). Www.spc.noaa.gov. https://www.spc.noaa.gov/history/early.html