If scientist can not tell you what the weather will do tomorrow?

Question

how in the world can they what it going to do 15 to 20 years from now?

Answer 1

They can't.... Just like 30 years ago when were all doomed to be frozen to death by the oncoming Ice Age... It was actually proposed to put soot on the polls to reduce the reflection of heat and save us all.... now we're going to bake to death unless we surrender our freedoms to a all knowing all caring world government....

Answer 2

Hello,

(ANS) The problem is that the earths atmosphere consists of gases, and water vapour & is influenced by air pressures, warming & cooling from both the sun and the earths oceans on a vast scale. The earths atmosphere behaves just like a liquid so trying to predict any idea of how this liquid will move is actually incredibly difficult.

Weather prediction is subject to all the same laws of "fluid dynamics" that say water in the oceans are but with all the extra complications of adding in land masses like the alps in Europe or the Rockies in the USA into the mix.

**Even with the worlds most powerful Cray super computers, using the best models and the best live weather data from numeros earth based weather stations on the ground, plus live statelite data too. The best predictions are only reasonably accurate for 24/48 hrs, 4 to 5 day predictions become far less reliable. Its an incredibly challenging task, hats off the weather people.

Ivan

Answer 3

Look, I got into thermodynamic a while ago, and we are teach that large closed systems cannot be simulated by computer, as they are considered super-critical systems! We can do simulations with basical informations and data, but cannot expect it to be accurate inside a super-critical (over-critical also used) system! And the even bigger problems, is that in simulations made by those ''scientists'' they considered the planet as a closed system, while in fact is an open system! Atmosphere expend very far into space, but we don`t understand the phenomenons that happen at this altitudes, so we limit our atmosphere to the Ionosphere!! But it goes much more far than this!
So all in all, those scientists theory, remains only theory, and this for a few centuries to come! So, let the debates continue between the two, to raise the bar in scientific standardisations...
So, in my book, those simulations, worth nothing! They can`t just take into account all the phenomenons influencing our atmosphere!!

Edit for Mary Katherine: Venus atmosphere is mainly made of methanol, and everybody at the time of your father, did not even know that methanol was at least 27 times more effective than CO2 in heat absorbtions... So the data your father was working on are outdated!! Sorry, but no scientists can get it ALL right, if they don`t even update themselves years after finishing school!

Answer 4

Weather prediction and Global warming are are not predicted the same way. Meteorologists (weather guys on TV) don't study Venus and other planets for tommorow's weather. Meteorology and eviromental science may both be science, but there's different methods for understanding and studying both.

Just for your information, I know it's not really relevant to your question, but I'll tell you anyway.
For the longest time, the planet Venus was considered our twin. It wasn't until technology came around that we were able to study Venus up close. In a nutshell, Scientists were able to discover that Co2, ie greenhouse gases, were the cause for making Venus so hot and dry.

Answer 5

Climate is much about trends, trends are much easier to predict than the weather.

For example, humans now live longer than they did previously, therefore the trend is one of longer life. Similarly, people watch more TV than they used to, again, it's a trend. What we can't do is single out one person and predict when they will die or how many hours of TV they will watch next week.

The same is true of climate, we know the world is warming, we can predict future trends based on what we know.

Further, climate and weather are two different things just like medicine and dentistry are. They're related but not the same, you wouldn't ask your doctor to examine your teeth and you wouldn't ask your dentist to look at an aching back. In that respect you ask a meteorologist about weather and a climatologist about climate.

Answer 6

If you go to the casino, I can't tell if you will win or lose your next spin at roulette. But I can tell you that if you stay in the casino for 15 or 20 years, you will lose a lot of money. The odds are stacked in the house's favor, and they wouldn't stay in business if they lost in the long run.

Weather is not climate. Weather is dominated by a lot of random variables that are impossible to model. (And "impossible" is literally true: most weather variables are mathematically chaotic, and therefore inherently unpredictable.)

But climate is the LONG TERM AVERAGE of weather, and just like long term averages at roulette -- or almost anything else -- it's much easier to compute.

Answer 7

even with day to day weather forecasting, scientists are not claiming they know definitely what will happen tomorrow. what they do is just theorize and come out with scenarios based on current scientific evidence. climate research is one of the most complex areas of science and scientists are still discovering new things with regards to climate.

Answer 8

You're mistaking climate for weather. Weather is what the atmosphere is doing at a certain time and certain place, climate is the average weather. While it's impossible to say with any degree of certainty what the weather will be doing tomorrow, it's relatively easy to say what the weather will be doing on average, say, a hundred years from now.

It would be analogous to rolling a pair of dice and recording the number rolled. If I roll the dice once, it's impossible to predict what they will land on; the number could be anything from 2 to 12. But not all numbers are equal, and some are more likely to be rolled than others. If I average out the number rolled on, say, one-hundred throws, I can expect that number to be somewhere near 7 (on a pair of dice, 7 has the most possible combinations of rolls that add up to it). The same goes for climate.

Answer 9

For exactly the same reason you can't tell if Tiger Woods will score a 69 on the first round of his next golf tournament--but you can be certain he will win some tournaments next year--predicting long term trends is more reliable than trying to predict short-term variations.

A fact known to anyone with even a high-school grasp of science! lol

Answer 10

Basic science.

If you have a system with a lot of short term variability, that doesn't mean you can't predict the long term trend.

Here's a great graph. Notice how the weather jumps around year to year, but the long term change in climate can clearly be seen.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record_png

If we don't do something about greenhouse gases, it's easy to predict the long term climate. As long as greenhouse gases are in control, it's going to be hotter, although the weather any individual year can do anything.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

Answer 11

I dont have time to get into it right now but it drives me nuts that liberals refuse to understand that humans are responsible for 1/3 of a percent of all greenhouse gas. 95% of greenhouse gases is water vapor. All I would like is an honest debate without the name calling and without the left trying to shut down that debate by making false claims that no scientist disgrees, that thos who do are traitors, right wingers, nazis and just about everything else and then of course seeking to defund scientist who disagree- let us have an HONEST debate and let us use REAL science devoid of political influence