[Day 2472 2021-07-02]
Lesson 14-1 The Butterfly Effect
Beyond two or three days, the world's best
weather forecasts are speculative,
and beyond six or seven they are worthless.
The Butterfly Effect is the reason.
For small pieces of weather ,
and to a global forecaster, small can mean
thunderstorms and blizzards ,
any prediction deteriorates rapidly.
Errors and uncertainties multiply,
cascading upward through a chain
of turbulent features, from dust devils
and squalls up to continent
size eddies that only satellites can see.
Themodern weather models work
with a grid of points of the order of sixty
miles apart, and even so, some starting data
has to be guessed, sinceground stations
and satellites cannot see everywhere.
But suppose the earth could be covered
with sensors spaced one foot apart,
rising at one-foot intervals all the way
to the top of the atmosphere.
