In this issue of Weather

Abstract

We begin the June 2016 issue on p. 131 with a look back at the life of Sir Francis Ronalds and the important part he played in developing the work of London's Kew Observatory, including the establishment of instruments to monitor atmospheric electricity and to make early photographic records of data. Perhaps more importantly, he also protected the observatory from budget cuts, −arguing the importance of the work of the observatory.In our second article, Mathew Owens examines the likelihood that thunderstorms might be falsely reported around the dates of major fireworks celebrations in the United Kingdom on p. 134. Perhaps surprisingly, ‘Remember, remember the fifth of November: Was that thunder I heard or not?’ shows that thunder is probably under‐reported around ‘Guy Fawkes’ Night’, −possibly due to the expectation that ­fireworks are likely to be heard.On p. 142, Anita Roy moves on to the appreciation of the weather by the public in ‘Always take the weather with you’. It has long been known that there is a great appreciation of the weather and its effects in Europe – not least, in the United Kingdom. This is reflected in literature and music, as well as in the peculiar obsession of the public with the Shipping Forecast; it is also evident in art, one of the more unusual aspects of which is the daily ­addition of ­colour codes to the leaves of printed ‘weather trees’, reflecting the weather.Finally, on p. 147 Tobias Thornes examines the tension between the need to improve accuracy in numerical weather prediction and its cost – practical as well as financial. ‘Can reducing precision improve accuracy in weather and climate models?’ shows that we might be able to improve our forecasts despite lower precision, using hardware optimised to allow the number of decimal places for data to vary according to the type of variable. Results are not yet conclusive, but initial data show advantages, −allowing available computing speed to be used optimally.