Ask A Scientist General Science Archive

Author:     Bill Beal
Text:       I am not sure if this question belongs here, or in the 
Environmental or Mathematics category, but here goes:  Has chaos theory become 
a large part of meteorology and weather forecasting?   Obviously the 
atmosphere is a pretty nonlinear system, but I was wondering if chaos theory 
is used in building computer models or recognizing weather patterns.  If so, 
does this mean that sophisticated and detailed enough models might allow more 
accurate forecasts beyond 48 hours?  Or is there too much data to collect to 
make such a model useful?

Response #:  1 of 1
Author:      Robert Topper
Text:        Bill, quick answer for you....chaos was first "rediscovered" by 
an atmospheric scientist who was studying a very simple model of atmospheric 
processes!  His name is Edward Lorenz, and he has done more than anyone else 
to make clear the importance of chaos in dynamical systems.  So your question 
is a good one and right on target...  The nasty thing about chaos which he 
observed is the "butterfly effect."  Basically, this told him that even if he 
had a perfect model of the atmosphere, with perfect data collected from all 
over the globe.  It would be impossible for anyone to make a long-range 
prediction of the weather because the flapping of a butterfly's wing in Peru 
would be enough of a perturbation on the system to cause the real system to 
diverge from the predicted patterns in an exponential fashion!!  Check out 
"Chaos" by James Gleick for more.  It is a good read and it will answer all of 
your questions.  I am an "expert" on chaos theory and it contains mostly fact 
and little opinion, this is NOT true of some other books (which I will not 
mention).