---
id: media/the-weather-machine
about:
  label: The Weather Machine
  description: >-
    Andrew Blum's 2019 account of the global system of stations, satellites,
    supercomputer models and institutions behind the daily weather forecast.
  tags:
    - weather
    - forecasting
    - infrastructure
    - climate
    - narrative
  depiction: cover.jpg
book:
  authors:
    - Andrew Blum
  publisher: Ecco
  year: 2019
  isbn: '9780062368614'
  url: 'https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20799929W'
domains:
  - climate
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: 'Open Library: The Weather Machine'
      url: 'https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20799929W'
    - title: 'Open Library: The Weather Machine (Ecco, 2019)'
      url: 'https://openlibrary.org/books/OL28156306M'
  created: '2026-10-17'
  reviewed: '2026-10-17'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
Blum follows the forecast back to its sources: old weather stations, satellite launches, the scientists who built a computer model of the atmosphere, and the history of the forecasting algorithms. He calls the result one of the largest machines people have ever made. International cooperation holds it together, and that cooperation is easy to take for granted and not guaranteed to last. Blum argues that forecasting has quietly entered a golden age the public has not yet learned to trust.

The forecasting system is the oldest operational digital twin of a place, the whole planet. Its model is fed by live observations, and people act on its daily product. Blum shows how the system is built and kept running, and the institutional arrangements a twin of any size depends on.

Cover via Open Library.