How does Chaos theory make weather prediction more difficult?

Question

I mean is, I read today that it makes weather predication more difficult the further into the future U go with it. How does Chaos theory suppose to work in a system like our atmosphere?

Answer 1

The way weather is forecast these days involves solving complicated mathematical equations.  The solutions starts with initial conditions that are derived from measurements all over the world.  Chaos theory says that if you make any sort of error at all in these measurements, then when you solve the equations starting with these errors, they will get larger and larger the further you forecast into the future.  Once you get about 3 weeks or so into the future, the errors become so large that the forecasts are completely useless.  Researchers have found a way around this problem, at least a little bit, by purposely adding a variety of errors to the initial conditions and then running the models many times starting with all those errors, that way they can get some idea what the range of possibilities is.  By the way, you might think that we could take better and better measurements and get around this problem, but that is impossible because of quantum mechanics and many other reasons.