: With the incredible technology that we have today, why is it still impossible to have 100% accuracy on predicting the weather?
In: 551
ELI5: It’s too much information and needs to be processed too quickly.We barely understand all the forces at play in pouring out a bucket of water.
Some guesstimates on the numbers involved……
In air, we have density, humidity, charge, speed, direction (in 3D), temperature, etc.I’ve listed 8 numbers there.It is further impacted by sun activity, moon, tides, surface materials etc.Then we have to measure that every hour. Or every minute?
It’s no good calculating these things 1km apart. In 1km, the air is going in different directions at different speeds and temperatures. The more detail the better so let’s measure every metre.
So for 1 cubic kilometre of measurements, we have 1000m x 1000m x 1000m x 8 measures x 60 times per hour. That is 480,000,000,000 numbers for 1 cubic meter of air for 1 hour.
So a town of 5km x 5km, and measuring 10km up, we have 5000 x 5000 x 10000 x 8 x 60.120,000,000,000,000 of numbers in 1 hour.
To cover a day, that is 2,880,000,000,000,000 numbers (2880 Trillion).
To cover the USA that is approx 50,350,080,000,000,000,000. For 1 hour.
For 1 day, 1,208,401,920,000,000,000,000 numbers. 1.2 Billion Trillion.
Now calculate the interactions of these numbers for 7 days.
And add in the impact of the ground shape with mountains and buildings.
To be really accurate we should calculate every 0.5m but that is 8 times the data.
This doesn’t even mention the complexity of HOW we calculate the interactions of the air. That in itself is not ELI5.
Latest Answers