Sunday, April 26, 2009

Cloud streets










I am reading now some papers on horizontal convective roll clouds, street clouds and other similar shallow structures and how they can interact with other phenomena like the sea breeze.
The first image is about what an ignorant could think about a cloud street; the second image is what radar iamges show very often but people do not know what they are looking at (convective rolls) , the third one is a nice one from satellite Terra, with streets over the Black Sea, the last one is an airplane view of the street structure, maybe the closer to our sense of Nature. True. Meteorology is a lucky science where concepts get to a structure that can be "seen".

I struggle to find a language that can ease the process of learning, to avoid difficult math and to build concepts beyond equations. But... there are concepts that reveal only with hard work and math.
The two last days I have advanced only two pages in my reading and my conclusion is that many forecasters might have only "cartoons" and nice images in their minds... and do their jobs in the same way a gipsy "musicant" can play violin without ever seeing scores. In the same way, there are composers that never played a piece. But art and science have a different consequence of "amateurism". Art is gentle with amateurism and kitsch.
How deep do we want to go in our profession depends on how much we need a "profession" or we just want to remain "amateurs". Is the difference between a "profession" and a "job".
Of course, amateurs can be much better payed, jobs can have a role in society, but... the real advance of our society has been done through the long effort of people conceptualizing, working hard, creating new theories for days and years in a row.
There is a "natural" selection among professionals: the real ones remain for research at any price, the amateurs go for better "jobs".
I remember a cross moment in my life when I had to choose between arts and physics, and I understand now that arts wouldn't have been enough for me, that I am a better artist now, as an amateur artist, than the professional artist I would have been without my professional work in science.






1 comment:

Les said...

Very nice work!

BTW, HAPPY BIRTH DAY!