UNDER PRESSURE: Decoding the Weather Machine

taste of science nyc is back from our summer hibernation with a FREE event on weather science! hosted at Ryan's Daughter in the UES, this event will feature two presentations from field experts, spanning today's forecast to how AI is impacting future predictions.

UNDER PRESSURE: Decoding the Weather Machine
Wed. Oct 21st, 2026
Doors open at 7PM (event is 7:30PM - ~9:30PM)
Ryan's Daughter (350 E 85th St in the Upper East Side)
21+, RSVP required. Capacity is limited.
RSVP for free here! (Meetup RSVPs are not counted)

Our speakers:

Andrew Blum
Author and Journalist
www.andrewblum.net
The Weather Machine

Andrew Blum is a journalist and author, writing about infrastructure and technology. He is the author of two books— The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast (Ecco, 2019), and Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet (Ecco, 2012) — and is at work on a third, about the infrastructure of the energy transition (Norton, 2028). His magazine writing has appeared in dozens of publications over three decades, including Wired, Time, MIT Technology Review, Popular Science, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times. He has degrees in literature from Amherst College and human geography from the University of Toronto, and lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.

The weather forecast relies on a vast infrastructure of balloons, satellites, supercomputers, and global diplomacy. When Andrew Blum published The Weather Machine in 2019, the forecast was a triumph of public science. Now it is being remade for the AI era, as private observation companies and new forecast models upend a long tradition of international collaboration. Who will pay for the ever-better forecast, and who will be left out?

Spencer Hill
Assistant Professor, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, City College of New York
https://spencerahill.github.io/
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