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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Last month, as much of the United States shivered in Arctic cold, weather models predicted a seemingly implausible surge of balmy, springlike warmth. A week later, that unlikely forecast came true—testimony to the remarkable march of such models. Since the 1980s, they’ve added a new day of predictive power with each new decade. Today, the best forecasts run out to 10 days with real skill, leading meteorologists to wonder just how much further they can push useful forecasts.
A new study suggests a humbling answer: another 4 or 5 days. In the regions of the world where most people live, the midlatitudes, “2 weeks is about right. It’s as close to be the ultimate limit as we can demonstrate,” says Fuqing Zhang, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University in State College who led the work, accepted for publication in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.
Forecasters must contend with the atmosphere’s turbulent flows, which nest and build on each other as they create clouds, power storms, and push forward cold fronts. A tiny disruption in one layer of turbulence can quickly snowball, infecting the next with its error. A 1969 paper by Massachusetts Institute of Technology mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz introduced this dynamic, later dubbed the “butterfly effect.” His research showed that two nearly identical atmospheric models can diverge widely after 2 weeks because of an initial disturbance as minute as a butterfly flapping its wings.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @02:22PM (2 children)
Forecasts longer than a few day ahead are shit for everything except temperature, and even that is often off by five or more degrees. I never trust forecasts longer than a couple days ahead, unless when I am in Miami where from May-November it's always 92F, humid, and with afternoon thunderstorms. Or when I am in a desert, or semi-arid prairie.
I don't think I've ever seen a local 5-day forecast where the 4th & 5th day have the weather they predicted on day one. On Monday they predict Sat-Sun will be hot with endless sunshine, sunshine, sunshine, then by Wednesday the weekend forecast is warm and partly cloudy, they on Friday they predict the weekend will now be cool and overcast is showers. Or the reverse is true: 5-days ahead is rain, rain, rain, they the weekend turns into sunshine.
Numerous articles have suddenly appeared in recent months about how much more accurate the forecasts are than 30 years ago, and these articles are just BS attempts at social engineering to manipulate the population into believing meteorologists can predict the weather any day any time anywhere. Why? Well every government now wants you to believe everything they say about climate change is true, and if they can "prove" that short-term forecasts are true, then maybe, just maybe more people will believe the predictions they make for 20, 50, 100 years ahead. Easier to carbon-tax the population then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @05:16PM (1 child)
You clearly haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about. Improvements in forecast are mostly due to improved numerical models, better input data and improved computers. You on the other hand are still an idiot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:56AM
He's right anf you are a fucking moron. Only an gofdn imbecile would trust a weather forecast more than a couple days ahead.