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
Roughly, a weather model creates a globe with ~1 cubed mile grid points… Plugs in the observations (satellites, ground stations, etc), and then uses well studied math tools to “fill in the grid” and then start stepping forward in time.
The more powerful computers become, the tighter those grids become, the more accurate the forecast. And presumably tighter grids will require “updates” to the equations used for the weather (for example, assumptions made with a 100 cubic mile grid might be invalid for a 1 cubic Mile.)
All that said, it will always be a “continuum model,” in that it is looking at bulk movements of air, not individual particles crashing around into each other. So being able to predict weather like we can predict Haley’s Comet isn’t ever likely.
Edit: cubic, not square.
Also continuum as a model is less an issue than the data problem of factories, cars, volcanoes etc… the point being it’s inherently averages even at a cubic meter of resolution
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