The Chaos Theory

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that James Gleick in his book "Chaos: Making a New Science" reports the work of meteorologist and pioneer of the chaos theory, Edward Lorenz, to computerize the forecasting of weather based on physical laws. The author points out that Gleick explains, even though the straight-forward mathematical attempt by Lorenz to find weather averages was a "failure", Lorenz discovered that the phenomenon of climate instability was related to the chaos theory. The paper relates that Lorenz' two non-linear discoveries are (1) that models of chaotic systems have an exquisitely sensitive dependence on initial dependence called the butterfly effect and (2) that even simple systems can show complex, chaotic behavior proving that the "clockwork" universe doesn't exist.

Table of Contents
Gleick's Belief of the Possibility to Forecast Weather
The Butterfly Effect
Nonlinear and Linear Systems
Similar to Predicting the Motions of Planets
Link between Aperiodic Behavior and Unpredictable Behavior
Thermal Convection

From the Paper:

"The very act of predicting weather is "fragile" when it comes to computer modeling, even though the data may be "reasonable trustworthy" and the laws of science are "purely physical" (20). But the computer modeling of weather patterns and air movement and temperatures and all the other ingredients that go into the stew, are only good for a day or two; "beyond two or three days the world's best forecasts" are / were speculative, and "beyond six or seven," Gleick writes, "they were worthless." Why were they worthless? "The Butterfly Effect was the reason.""

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