ABSTRACT
Forensic meteorology draws upon the climate record, local meteorological observations, and the fundamentals of atmospheric science to reconstruct key weather events for use in criminal or civil litigation. The forensic scientist must remain equally cognizant of the potential sources of error of the meteorological data as they are applied to the case at hand. A common thread linking the forensic meteorologist to most if not all civil/criminal investigations is the measurement and/or reconstruction of a single meteorological variable: temperature. The forensic meteorologist, when consulted must communicate the inherent uncertainty present in the reconstruction to the forensic entomologist, effectively placing “error bars” on the temperature data to account for the absence of in situ observations. A forensic entomologist relies on species identification and a determination of the developmental age of insects recovered from a death scene to estimate the time of colonization.
