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Living in a world of uncertainty

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Living in a world of uncertainty
> http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/news/10.1063/PT.5.4015

> Have you ever experienced a small turn of events that resulted in a
> completely unexpected, unplanned outcome? Unexpected events happen in
> science too—more frequently than you might imagine.

> Such was the case for mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz
> of MIT. In the early 1960s he accidentally stumbled on one of the
> most significant findings in atmospheric science. Lorenz was using a
> simple computer model, which integrated a set of equations forward in
> time to make a prediction based on the initial state of the
> atmosphere. Curious about his model solutions, Lorenz decided to
> change the mathematical precision of the initial state. To his
> surprise, his minuscule changes resulted in a completely different
> forecast—almost as if he had used a different model! The finding led
> Lorenz to conclude that the atmosphere is a chaotic system, and that
> even the smallest errors in the initial estimate of the atmospheric
> conditions can limit our ability to predict weather phenomena.

> Lorenz's discovery half a century ago has greatly influenced the way
> meteorologists predict and study weather today. Given that the
> atmosphere is a chaotic system, numerical forecasts will inevitably
> contain errors, due to instabilities of the atmospheric flow. To
> reduce the chances of large forecast errors, initial conditions must
> be known precisely and model uncertainties must be minimized.
> Unfortunately, direct observations are not available in much of the
> world, including most of the oceans, as well as remote locations
> where it is impossible to install and maintain weather instruments.
> Even with the existing observation networks, which include hundreds
> of weather balloons launched every day around the world, atmospheric
> measurements still include systematic instrumental errors.





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Living in a world of uncertainty Sam Wormley <swormley1@gmail.com> - 2015-08-03 13:20 -0500
  Re: Living in a world of uncertainty Fabian Russell <root@localhost.localdomain> - 2015-08-03 18:45 +0000
  Re: Living in a world of uncertainty "reber g=emc^2" <herbertglazier0@gmail.com> - 2015-08-03 12:00 -0700
    Re: Living in a world of uncertainty benj <nobody@gmail.com> - 2015-08-04 02:29 -0400
    Re: Living in a world of uncertainty HVAC <Mr.HVAC@gmail.com> - 2015-08-04 06:24 -0400
    Re: Living in a world of uncertainty "reber g=emc^2" <herbertglazier0@gmail.com> - 2015-08-04 15:27 -0700
      Re: Living in a world of uncertainty Sam Wormley <swormley1@gmail.com> - 2015-08-04 18:00 -0500
      Re: Living in a world of uncertainty Double-A <double-a3@hush.com> - 2015-08-04 17:29 -0700
      Re: Living in a world of uncertainty "hanson" <hanson@quick.net> - 2015-08-04 18:51 -0700
      Re: Living in a world of uncertainty HVAC <Mr.HVAC@gmail.com> - 2015-08-05 06:43 -0400
  Re: Living in a world of uncertainty jimp@specsol.spam.sux.com - 2015-08-03 19:08 +0000
  Re: Living in a world of uncertainty gilber34 <invalid@invalid.com> - 2015-08-03 14:21 -0500
    OOps noTthaTguY <abu.kuanysh05@gmail.com> - 2015-08-03 14:22 -0700

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