Figure 1 Even today, weather can be hard to predict.
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This article looks at some physics that relates to weather (gas laws) and describes how computer models are sensitive to initial conditions — small differences in input produce differences in output that undergo exponential growth with time.
Why are weather forecasts so often wrong? The short answer is ‘chaos’. Many people regard chaos as one of the three key physics discoveries of the twentieth century, alongside relativity and quantum mechanics. Examples of chaotic behaviour occur in many diverse places, from fluctuations in the weather (Figure 1) and the stock market (Figure 2) to the shapes of coastlines, snowflakes and ferns.
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