files translations #678

On Monday 3 December at 2.30 pm there will be a short snowy slope on the northern outskirts of London.
An accumulation of 5 cm of dry snow is expected. Attention therefore to road traffic. As early as 17
time will re-establish itself and the sun will return to the whole metropolis, with a rapid melting of the snowpack. There
maximum temperature will be + 5 ° C, the minimum of -2 ° C.
Here, it can suffice.
I disconnect from the Internet.
I wanted to let you know the detailed Monday forecasts for the city of London. I could have
choose any other European or world city. What's strange, you will ask me. There is that
this prediction is for Monday 3 December 2092. And we live only in 2089!
The secret Spaghetti group officially formed in 2085. A group of virtual friends, scattered around
all of Europe. We had met in fact on a weather forum, united by the same deep passion
for meteorology and climatology. A passion so profound as to make us make the decision that
he put us out of the law. But we had no other choice.
About 10 years have passed since the meteorological science has made the most discovery
important of all its not long history. As we all know, the climate system is non-linear;
some prefer to call it complex, others chaotic. It is, according to the theories elaborated in way
official by Edward Lorenz, back in 1979, of a concept that states that the troposphere is a
dynamic system extremely sensitive to initial conditions: very small variations are enough
data entering the numerical-forecasting models that should predict its evolution,
also due to minimal errors or only to negligible inaccuracies, to make it different also in
striking way the final result. This means that such a system is in itself unpredictable
even with the most powerful supercomputer: or rather, that the percentage of unpredictability increases away
away that one goes chronologically from the starting situation. At least this was what you did
he thought at the beginning of the 21st century. The weather forecasts at that time were very precise
for the first 3-5 days, then they became only tendential from 7 to 10 days, and finally we entered one
sort of vaticination over two weeks. But something happened that completely revolutionized the
meteorological science.
We were only boys, maybe very bright for their young age, who enjoyed playing the games
modeling releases on the Internet. We spent hours discussing it on the forum, arguing
passionately, to rejoice in the successes and to depress us for mistakes. As I said we were
of different nationalities. Jules was a Frenchman so expert in atmospheric physics as touchy,
Erik a Norwegian, a true Viking with a special predictive intuition. Then there were Carlos, lo
Spanish, sanguine and specialized in climate teleconference and Mark, German,
obsessed with order and passionate above all of historical climatology. And finally there was me,
Roberto, the Italian, the nowcasting expert, ie in real time analysis of the conditions
weather. We were just boys, and we lived for our forecast skirmishes, doing a
race to who would be the first to be able to guess between the folds of the models the most weather evolution
likely. What fell in love was the challenge, absolutely improbable, with nature, to try to
unveil its secrets by reading the signs that the troposphere sent us in the various races of the models.
But all this suddenly ended.
On June 14, 2079, Professor Hordo's team at the University of Reading gave an announcement
upsetting not only for the world of meteorology: the weather forecast would be from now on
forward results accurate up to two years apart with a margin of error of 0.1%, and up to
ten years with a margin of error of 5%! It was at the end of our dreams.


In fact, a new generation of satellites had been sending in orbit a few years ago
meteorological conditions, the Omnia. It was said that in a short time they would make the old man obsolete
data collection system of the World Meteorological Organization, the glorious WMO. Thank you
to sophisticated scanners and sensors, they could detect all kinds of weather information a
any level of the troposphere and the stratosphere. In other words temperature, pressure, humidity,
speed and direction of the winds were photographed and measured by the Omnia and then in real time
sent to data centers on Earth. And the fact was that they were as precise as they could
measure the exact temperature of your bedroom with more precision than yourself
latest generation thermometer! In short, a revolution! All the old system founded on
Meteorological stations, probe balloons, manual surveys were soon dismantled. The satellites
they sent practically in a continuous way all the data that a meteorologist had always only dreamed of
of having. Above all, data from areas that are difficult to monitor, such as the oceans, the deserts and the
large ice caps made the difference. Billions of data per second sent to large centers
world meteorological surveys, which perfectly photocopied the meteorological situation of the whole
terrestrial globe, to the most remote place of the Earth and above all to the last dispersed
molecule.
The cautious mistrust of the early times was soon swept away by the results. Shocking! The
weather forecasts began to result in exasperating accuracy for every place on Earth. Not
there were errors, not even the smallest. Even after weeks or months. After the first year
from the beginning of the experimentation it was certain that the word prediction could now be used
really according to its etymological meaning: a real anticipated vision of what
it would be the future weather of every place on Earth.
I remember the dismay that grew in us with every new success story of the Omnia system.
By now we met more and more rarely on the forum. It made no sense to interpret what
it no longer had to be interpreted: it was enough to read. Anyone was able to do it.
Something about me, of my deep self, seemed to slip away with my passion for the weather. IS
I felt that it also happened to my virtual friends. Knowing everything does not belong to nature
human.
We had never met before, I mean in person.
But when each of us got a laconic message from Erik inviting us to Bergen for one
last goodbye to our passion and our youth, we certainly could not refuse. They were orami
many months passed since the last discussions on the forum, but I immediately recognized my four companions
as soon as I entered the Norwegian pub. After the usual pleasantries, Erik looked at us excitedly and there
he said, "We can not let this happen!"
And so the Spaghetti clandestine group was officially born.
In a short time our attacks on the Omnia system became so effective that our reputation grew
exponentially. They even called us terrorists, and the big multinationals affiliated to the
Omnia group have been hunting us for years now. For now, in vain, fortunately.
After Erik's words it became clear to everyone that our purpose was to boycott the
system. Bring things back to how they were before, or at least prevent them from evolving into that
direction. Return to the joy of interpretation, leaving the security prison.
If the problem of the unpredictability of the complex weather-climate system had been solved by the
root, ie entering a huge mass of exact data in virtually real time, we had to
to recreate deterministic chaos no longer in the real system, but in the fictitious one. In the Omnia system,

in the great computerized monster that had killed our dream. Thanks to our skills
both in the weather-climate field and in the computer field, we managed to gain access, of course
in an illegal way, to the data that were incessantly sent to the supercomputers of the big centers
forecasters belonging to the Omnia group. And so began our work of perturbation.
Those of you more or less our age will certainly not have forgotten what the Ensemble were,
dubbed spaghetti by the lovers of meteophiles. It was one of the ways invented at the end
of the twentieth century to try to mitigate the problems related to the non-linearity of related equations
to the weather forecast. Practically inserting in the official data, which then arrived
especially from the Earth, used to initialize weather forecasting programs, small ones
variations, of the perturbations, it was possible to evaluate what was the most probable weather evolution. Yes
he was running a model for dozens of times, each of them

We do the same thing. But no longer with the aim of trying to improve performance
forecast; indeed, just for the exact opposite! We insert some perturbations, the wrong data, like this,
randomly, randomly, throughout the Omnia system. Of course, the results will be profound
edited. And with them the predictions, which will certainly not be more precise. The system fails to
to distinguish the real data from our fallacious ones, and so it elaborates the prediction starting from information of
wrong departure.
The joy that took hold of us when the first big forecast flop took place was enormous!
It was indeed a very important forecast, on the occasion of the 2088 World Championships.
It rained, it rained for almost two weeks, while the Omnia predictions had given good weather.
It did not take long to realize that someone had changed the data. But it was not so easy to find out
who had been. But our signature made us famous: the Spaghetti. And after a difficult start,
many people even started to find us nice.
For us, however, it was like being born again. The Omnia system no longer guaranteed predictive certainty. IS
then the weather forums, data interpreters, were reborn. In fact, only man could, analyzing one
series of cards, identify with experience and intuition what the scenario could have been
evolutionary more probable.
Now I can finally reconnect to the Internet and let you read the final part of the forecast
for Monday, December 3, the city of London.
This prediction made through the Omnia system can not be considered error free, given i
reiterated attacks by the Spaghetti terrorist group. Users are therefore invited to use the
traditional meteorological forecasting system, at least until the problem is solved.
And we know that this will not happen so soon, do not you think?