Is 100% Weather Forecast Accuracy Possible?

[caption id="attachment_358608" align="aligncenter" width="575" caption="www.space.com"][/caption]

Sometimes the weather forecast isn’t right and instead of a predicted bright sunny day the sky blackens and clouds roll in. Detecting cancer or sending a man to the moon has been done by humans but predicting the future can be a bit complicated. In fact a meteorologist’s job is to predict the most likely outcome from data provided.

Scientists accumulate data/information from around the world. Anemometers, rain collectors and temperature sensors, weather balloons, container ships and satellites are spread out to produce data that is then sent to weather stations across the globe. The data is then processed by a computer that calculates the factors such as humidity, temperature, wind speed, and atmosphere pressure. A single different variable can throw the whole equation off leading to a different prediction.

Accurately predicting the weather is impossible because weather is a chaotic system. In chaos theory the butterfly effect is when one significantly small event results into a large outcome. Edward Lorenz, the father of chaos theory, once gave the example of a butterfly flapping its wings in Asia could affect the weather in New York. Or say that butterfly flapped its wings creating the additional breeze needed to jumpstart a tornado, while without that butterfly being in the right moment and the right time could lead to no tornado.

In the same way it’s almost impossible to roll dice the same way twice. Almost… Say we roll dice and afterwards calculated its momentum, the way it shifts in wind, and the bounces it makes on the table. After accumulating data we made a dice machine thrower that could accurately do so with what data we made, successfully throwing two dice the same way reaching the same result.

Applying this to the weather, if we had every data on every single molecule in the world then weather predictions would never be wrong. But of course that’s impossible. Let’s just enjoy the good weather while we can.

http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/uncertainty-in-weather-summer-edition/7891/

http://www.quora.com/Meteorology/Why-is-still-so-hard-to-predict-weather-accurately-and-precisely

http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/atmospheric/scientists-predict-weather.htm

http://www.bubl.org/navweatheroverviewtrainingvariables.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect