How do scientists forecast the weather?

Take atmosphere ocean land and sea ice to the observed state, start the model out,

integrated forward in time for 10 years, and try to predict the time evolution of regional climate as it's happening.

It's Friday August 9th and you're listening to Science Friday.

I'm Sci-Fi producer D Peter Schmidt. I'm going to make a prediction and it's that most of us probably check the weather this week especially with all the heat and storms happening this summer and most of the, we can get pretty accurate forecasts for the next few hours or a couple days.

But what about weeks, months, or even a decade ahead of time?

It seems like science fiction, but we'll hear from two researchers who are working on exactly that.

They joined us at a live show we hosted in Boulder, Colorado last week.

But before we get to that, here's Ira Flato with the top stories in science this week.

Back in June, you might remember that Boeing starliner capsule that successfully flew

astronaut Sunny Williams and Butch Wilmore to the International Space Station on its maiden voyage?

Remember that flight of course was not without its drama, with problems arising with its thrusters.

The mission was supposed to be an eight-day tour, but now it's August

and Williams and Wilmore are still on the space station. Turns out that Starliner had more issues than Boeing thought and NASA is now trying to figure

out how to get those astronauts safely back to Earth. But it could take a while.

Here's how NASA's Ken Bowersachs explained it this week.

We know that at some point we need to bring Butch and Sunny home.

While they're up there we have extra crews, we have extra hands, they can do a lot more work, but they're up there we have extra crews we have extra hands they can do a lot more work

but they're also using up more supplies so we have to maintain that balance and

at some point we need to bring those folks home and get back to a normal cruise

on the I assess. I'm sure they do. Umer Fon is here with that story and other

top stories of the week. He's senior correspondent at Vox.

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