One of the earliest and most watched use of colour film was by Chuck Leith at Livermore. His Atmospheric General Circulation Model was one of the first such models. He is remembered as also producing a 6-minute colour animated film of the model that was widely shown in the USA.
In September 1963, he showed his film at American Meteorological Society's Northern California Chapter where he discussed his five-level model of the general circulation and displayed its behavior through time-lapse motion pictures of maps of surface pressure, 500-mb geopotential, and 600-mb temperature fields.
The colour version was made by taking three 35mm black and white films and using the company Pacific Title to generate the colour version.
Atmospheric General Circulation Model Film
In 1968, a movie, Image of a Thunderstorm , was produced by Freeny and Gabbe at Bell Labs. The 1969 paper A Statistical Description of Intense Rainfall discusses the project.
Washington et al's 1968 paper, The Application of CRT Contour Analysis in General Circulation Experiments discusses the need for an efficient method of contour analysis if computer animated films are to be generated.
Also in 1968, the Kasahara paper Computer Experiments in the Global Circulation of the Earth's Atmosphere stated The motions of the atmosphere are governed by physical laws which are expressed in the form of the equations of hydrodynamics and thermodynamics. These equations are, in principle, well known, but some of the physical processes in the atmosphere, such as small-scale turbulence and convection, cloud formation, and precipitation mechanisms, are still difficult to express quantitatively.
One conclusion was We have seen that numerical experiments help us to understand many questions about the mechanisms of the general circulation. The degree of understanding may be measured by our ability to simulate, with a model, actual atmospheric motions. A successful model, therefore, must be capable of predicting actual weather changes. Or, put in another way, we judge how good a model is by verifying predicted patterns. For this reason, we have also been working on the use of real data in order to check the forecasting capability of our general circulation model. So far, the results of our forecasts are very encouraging. Incidentally, it is stil difficult to prepare global upper air maps due to the paucity of observational data over the oceans and over the Southern Hemisphere in general. This means that it will be a long time until satisfactory short-range weather predictions are achieved because of the lack of accurate initial conditions for forecasting models.>We have seen that numerical experiments help us to understand many questions about the mechanisms of the general circulation. The degree of understanding may be measured by our ability to simulate, with a model, actual atmospheric motions. A successful model, therefore, must be capable of predicting actual weather changes. Or, put in another way, we judge how good a model is by verifying predicted patterns. For this reason, we have also been working on the use of real data in order to check the forecasting capability of our general circulation model. So far, the results of our forecasts are very encouraging. Incidentally, it is stil difficult to prepare global upper air maps due to the paucity of observational data over the oceans and over the Southern Hemisphere in general. This means that it will be a long time until satisfactory short-range weather predictions are achieved because of the lack of accurate initial conditions for forecasting models.