Eli5: Is weather *truly* predictable? Is it possible to develop a scientific model supported by satellites, software/ai, and super computers that could predict specific storms and events months/years/decades in advance?

Question

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

Answer 1

We can predict the *chance*s of what the weather will be this afternoon.

We can predict the *chances* of what the weather will be tomorrow, but that will change depending on what actually happens this afternoon.

We can predict the *chances* of what the weather will be next week, but it’ll have a lot of possibility for failure because it will depend the actual weather Sunday, which will depend on the actual weather Saturday, which will depend on the actual weather Friday, which will depend…

If you’re trying to predict **years** out then you may as well just graph the past several years, extend the line forwards, and shrug.