Ask A Met: Can Math Predict The Weather?
Ask A Met: Can Math Predict The Weather?
Wyatt WilliamsSat, March 7, 2026 at 12:28 PM UTC
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Illustration by Lisa Pringle
This week's question comes from Morning Brief reader Eric, who asks, "I've heard that meteorologists use math to predict the weather. How does that work?"
Meteorologist Jonathan Belles: Yes, absolutely. Math really does predict the weather.
We have a number of equations and I think all of us meteorologists have horror stories about the different math classes we took in college to try to learn them.
To use meteorological math, you have to figure out the physics and dynamics of the atmosphere, which is not easy.
This means we have to predict the movements of a liquid because the atmosphere is a liquid. Then, of course, that liquid creates other liquid, meaning rainfall, snowfall and that sort of thing, which comes down to physics.
For those equations to work, you need every sort of weather data that you can think of: temperature, humidity, wind speed, how much moisture there is in the air and all of that information at different levels, too, because the layers of the atmosphere don't act independently of each other.
To gather that data, you need weather balloons and observation stations and satellites gathering data at different altitudes.
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Each one of those layers can act a little bit differently. One layer could be 30 degrees, the next one up is 32 degrees, and the wind speed might be a little stronger up aloft and a little different direction. You may have heard a meteorologist say that the European model is a little better than the Global Forecast System. Part of that is because the Euro has more layers.
Each of those variables is going to be used in these equations. We have to get all of the data as correct as possible. There's a saying in models: “If you put junk in, you'll get junk out.”
If the observations are wrong, the forecast will be wrong, and the forecast will get more wrong the farther down in time you go.
National Weather Service
Some of this math started well over 100 years ago. One of the earliest equations was the pressure-temperature relationship. We knew that when pressure does something that density does something else and temperature does something else. So, we were able to write an equation for that interaction.
The math has grown exponentially more complex since that time. Our understanding of physics continues to evolve to this day. For some of the more complex weather models, the lines of code have to be hundreds of thousands of lines long to get all of this done.
For most meteorologists that are not involved in modeling, they master it in college and, after that, they're done. But learning how these equations work and understanding the fundamentals of them is part of the core meteorology educational experience.
Do you have a question to ask the meteorologists at Weather.com? Write to us or drop a weather-related question in the comments below. We’ll pick a new one each week from readers to answer.
Source: “AOL Breaking”
