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Science and Society
How is science helping us to improve life in the city? How does it help us to predict high-impact weather events, which today influence all of our lifes by strongly influencing travel, by strong dependence of renewable energy on clouds and winds, and by the dependence of agriculture and so many other parts of or modern society on the atmosphere, precipitation, rivers, clouds and wind?
Basic Science. First, basic science aims to understand the processes
which are relevant to a particular event or phenomenon. For example, there
is cloud microphysics, which describes how clouds are built. It combines
physical and chemical insight with meteorological knowledge, and in all of
it models are formulated and tested based in the language of mathematics.
There are students and professors, small and larger teams, which carry out
experiments, formulate systems of equations, carry out simulations,
test their theories and then publish them in both science journals and
for the general public.
Applied Science. Usually, basic science tries to achieve understanding, and applied science tries to work on influencing, on simulations and predictions, on using the science to actually make a difference. That might not be easy. For example: when you want to calculate a weather forecast, you need to be fast. If it takes you a week to calculate a forecast for a week, the weather has already moved on .
Today, in modern supercomputing centres, we have 15 minutes to determine the state of the atmosphere on a global scale, and then one hour to calculate forecasts for three days. This is done every 6 hours. If it comes to fast high-impact events like heavy thunderstorms with strong precipitation, we do it even every three hours with a forecast lead time of one day (24 hours). than means we have about 30 minutes to carry out the task. To do this, it needs very advanced science, it needs new ideas all the time.