Re:Year Without a Summer
by Retric on Monday February 24, 2020 @12:07AM
(#22401805)
Butterfly effect refers to a drastically smaller change than a massive volcanic eruption significantly impacting global weather. The point is differences that are hard to notice making a difference.
Lorenz discovered the effect when he observed that runs of his weather model with initial condition data that was rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner would fail to reproduce the results of runs with the unrounded initial condition data. A very small change in initial conditions had created a significantly different outcome.[2]
Wind speed of 2.56789281 MPH vs 2.567892811 MPH is hard to accurately detect, but it’s important. That’s the butterfly effect.
Lorenz discovered the effect when he observed that runs of his weather model with initial condition data that was rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner would fail to reproduce the results of runs with the unrounded initial condition data. A very small change in initial conditions had created a significantly different outcome.[2]
Wind speed of 2.56789281 MPH vs 2.567892811 MPH is hard to accurately detect, but it’s important. That’s the butterfly effect.