Rock star data scientist Nate Silver wrote a long article on meteorology for the New York Times:
Why are weather forecasters succeeding when other predictors fail? It’s because long ago they came to accept the imperfections in their knowledge. That helped them understand that even the most sophisticated computers, combing through seemingly limitless data, are painfully ill equipped to predict something as dynamic as weather all by themselves. So as fields like economics began relying more on Big Data, meteorologists recognized that data on its own isn’t enough.
The New York Times: The Weatherman Is Not a Moron
(via Abe)