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by Abraxis on September 24th, 2006

Abraxis

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Why can't weather forecasters accurately predict what the weather conditions will be like beyond the next 24 hours?

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  • by Im Alec has abandoned this account on September 24th, 2006

    Im Alec has abandoned this account

    It depends you detailed a forcast you want. Actually, they can fairly reliably predict weatehr about five days ahead most of the time, and sometimes further.

    The problem is that wqeather is what is known as a chaotic system. In a chaotic system, even tiny errors gradually expand over time, becoming much larger as time passes.

    The weather in the future is predicted by measuring the weather now, then applying some sophisticateed computer science (which in nonetheless just a way of saying last time the wethat looked like *this*, a day later it looked like *that*) to work out how it is going to change. Since they have a finite number of measuring stations, and each measuring station has a finite accuracy, there are inevitably some approximations - which are actually the same as errors - in their view of what the weather is like *now*. As they look further and further ahead, those errors get bigger and bigger until the predictions become essentially worthless.

    As I say, for enough money, and for a specified area, the predictions can g=be quite good up to five days ahead. But beyond that, the erros pile up.

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  • by hemiman on September 26th, 2006

    hemiman

    Who knows for sure. I have always believed that meterologists have the only job in the world where you can be wrong 50% of the time and still keep your job.

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