Title: The Real Butterfly Effect: Theory and Implications

Tim Palmer is visiting the department and a Houghton Lecturer. This is one of a series of seminars he will give as part of his visit.

Abstract

The phrase “The Butterfly Effect” is almost universally used to describe
sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaotic systems (be they high
or low order). However, this is not what Lorenz originally had in mind by
this phrase. Rather he postulated the existence of something much more
radical: that a high dimensional system like the atmosphere may have a
finite predictability horizon which cannot be extended in time, no matter
how small the initial uncertainties are. Is there evidence for “The Real
Butterfly Effect” in the real world, and is “The Real Butterfly Effect” a
property of the Navier-Stokes equations? In this seminar, I will review
some of these issues and then conclude that an understanding of the “The
Real Butterfly Effect” is of crucial practical importance as we aim to
provide reliable weather and climate predictions to a range of real-world
applications from health to agronomy to hydrology.