PowerPoint Presentation

Chaos: Limits to Forecasting

•We now know that even if our models were perfect, it would still be impossible to predict precisely winter storms beyond 10-14 days
•There are countless, undetected small errors in our initial analyses of the atmosphere
•These small disturbances grow with time as the computer projects farther into the future
Lorenz posed, “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”