Masters of uncertainty : weather forecasters and the quest for ground truth / Phaedra Daipha.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-260) and index.

Introduction. Decision making under uncertainty -- The weather prediction enterprise -- Working the weather: a shift in the life of a weather forecaster -- Distilling complexity: atmospheric indeterminacy and the culture of disciplined improvisation -- Managing risk: the trials and tribulations of hazardous weather forecasting -- Anticipating the future: temporal regimes of meteorological decision making -- Whose weather is it anyway?: from the production to the consumption of decisions -- Toward a sociology of decision making.

"In Masters of Uncertainty, Phaedra Daipha offers a new framework for understanding decision-making practice after spending years immersed in a northeastern office of the National Weather Service. Arguing that forecasters have made a virtue of the unpredictability of the weather, Daipha shows how they enlist an onmivorous appetite for information and improvisational collage techniques to create a locally meaningful forecast on their computer screens. This richly detailed and lucidly written book advances a theory of decision making that foregrounds the pragmatic and situated nature of expert cognition and casts new light on how we make decisions in the digital age"--Page {4] of cover.