Elephant in the room: There are factors like volcanos and human involvement that create unpredictable variables
As above. And let me lead with this: I’m a smart guy, but i know little about meteorology. My question is grounded in ignorance.
Right now we can predict with relative accuracy storms and events 3-7 days out, depending on the scope of the storm. Temperatures are even ‘easier’.
It seems like we’re close (if not already there) to having global weather data at all times. We live in a world of scientific order, so shouldn’t we be able to create a model that very accurately predicts specific weather on a long timeline?
Exa: I’m ignorant in meteorology, but I would think all of the fronts and movements that will lead to a hurricane in the Atlantic in 2025 are already in motion. Couldn’t we track that *now*? Play out the equation, so to speak?
And then we’d be able to reverse engineer the moments that disrupted the model, to accurately determine what artificially affected the weather pattern.
Thanks! And sorry if I’m dumb.
In: Planetary Science
Weather is part of chaos theory, which is when small perturbations make a large difference. The 3 body problem is another example of this that’s recently gained spotlight because of the show.
The butterfly effect was coined because allegedly the force of a butterfly flapping its wings was enough perturbation to effect the path of a tornado (this concept is not practically true because there are much larger effects such as cars driving, but mathematically it is true).
So until we reach a point where we can calculate the force and location of every butterfly flap on the planet, predicting weather a year away is impossible.
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