CHAOS: Why It's So Hard To Predict the Weather

[@Thumbsupurbum]

You explained how El Nino works better than any teacher I ever had.

[@nolanthiessen1073]

Predicting weather is like rolling dice. We may get the day-to-day wrong, because of individual unpredictability. However climate science is like rolling dice 100,000,000 times. We know that over the long term we expect to get a certain ratio of rolls within a very small margin of error. Climate change is like loading the dice by adding a fraction of a gram to one side of a die. Individual rolls (years) may very well not land on that side, but over the long term we see that there is an unnatural amount of that outcome.

[@user-yn9mp4bt3q]

You clearly do not understand the significance of Edward Lorenz work.

[@cion191]

You completely don't know how climate change work. Climate is very complex system that rely on tons of changing variables and positive and negative feedbacks, that some of them still not completely understood, and require super computer to simulate. That's why the Ipcc prediction for the temperature increase in 2100 is anywhere between mild 1.5 to catastrophic 4.5 degrees.

[@user-yn9mp4bt3q]

@@cion191 lol its a politics not science. Carbon tax is a scam. Sensitivity to initial conditions and future influences are unknowable. Google Edward Lorenz.

[@cion191]

@@user-yn9mp4bt3q I know. I started to have doubts about the cause of climate change only few weeks ago after hearing an interview with Israeli scientist Nir Shaviv. He have some very interesting theory on how climate can change naturally and it's supported by many empirical evidence. For some reason completely ignore by climate scientists.

[@user-yn9mp4bt3q]

@@cion191 the reason why it must be ignored is detailed in the climate gate emails. Everyone should read them. kzbin.info/www/bejne/l2mVeGxsrdunpqs

[@icannotchoose]

I didn't know about this until now but it's good to know about. This is really interesting

[@danzdoinz8000]

I remember El Nino back in 98'... It was pretty intense! I lived in the Santa Barbara Ca. area at the time and the apartment complex I lived at flooded, there were cars floating! The creak nearby flooded over and washed away cars from the nearby dealership car lot... It was crazy! I never saw anything like it after that! I'm remembering more as I write about it! I remember a while bunch of boats got washed up on the beach all up and down the California coast but specifically that was the time the Stearns Warf in Santa Barbara got bashed real good by the storm! It destroyed about half of it I recall... I think I also recall it was the best surf the area ever had in recent history! I remember seeing a picture of a surf spot called Campus Point in Goleta Ca., a spot I would later surf myself when I got older because I was 7yo at the time of El Niño but the point is I saw a picture of Campus Point in a magazine years later that was taken during El Niño and the sets were MASSIVE!!! The waves at the point were 20' tall! A 20' face is a pretty big wave in an area where the biggest it gets is maybe 12'... Yup! I remember El Niño alright!

[@llpBR]

here in Brazil, when we talk about butterfly effect, the butterfly is actually from China. Curious

[@Galaxia7]

Yeah I usually hear it with the tornado being in Japan

[@r.guerreiro140]

Indeed lol

[@AuroraWhispers]

I understand this: stronger winds = warmer water in Australia/Asia; weaker winds = warmer water in South America. Question... what makes the wind stronger or weaker?

[@kerianos]

+AuroraWhispers duh, clearly the amount of beans eaten in South America!

[@TeshnosFire]

+AuroraWhispers It goes something like.. Atmospheric pressure makes the air move (wind = moving air) Atmospheric pressure is force the tons of weight (pressure) the air above and all around us (Atmosphere) exerts on itself. Cold air is heavy, hot air is light. And the constant difference in this temperature causes shifts in the air. And I feel like I am making no sense. s_s Edit: Like, places where its warmer have low pressure so the wind moves in there. Dude to the constant shift in temperature thanks to earth's position to the sun the world warms and cools in different places. Still feel like I am making now sense. I give up. xD

[@pr000n000bie]

+AuroraWhispers the wind is actually powered by the sun, so i'd guess the changes in wind are due to changes in distance to the sun, or if there are clouds wich reflect some of the light or if suddenly a skyscraper stands in the wind's way, i don't even know. super complex stuff, all of this, probably unpredictable, as hank just said

[@MartinHoeckerMartinez]

+AuroraWhispers The ocean and atmosphere influence each other. The warm water in Indonesia fuels thunderstorms and convection, the air that rises in the thunderstorms has to return somewhere. That return current (called the Walker cell www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/enso/walker-circulation-ensos-atmospheric-buddy ) drives the water allong the equator. The location of the continents limit exactly where the system can find equilibrium points (e.g. El/La Niño/a or normal conditions) and the variability of the global weather tugs the equatorial system away from those equilibria.

[@StormChaser_Suedhessen]

pr000n000bie it's more the air pressure but that's true as well

[@daviddelpozofiliu5556]

I always say that meteorology and psychology have the same problem as sciences. Too many parameters to consider, and a slight variation in one of them can give vastly different results.

[@EstevaoSlow]

Yeah! Great video!

[@ideamissing]

Hi Joe, I was reading some things about the ocean and someone mentioned that a crate of rubber ducks had been used to track the global oceanic currents. This sounds like an amazing story for you to look into, if it's true

[@besmart]

+ideamissing It is true! I have been looking for a way to turn that into a video for over a year. Rest assured that I definitely know about it :)

[@Salokin92]

+ideamissing I read "a crate of rubber dicks" and had this image of some freak sex toy incident, which somehow is used by science to predict the ocean currents ^^"

[@288theabe]

+Salokin92 LOL That would've gotten more people interested in the project....

[@UnknownXV]

+Salokin92 You owe me $209.56 USD for a new monitor.

[@Salokin92]

do you accept bitcoin?UnknownXV

[@UthoRiley]

The amount of editing and animation in these videos is... Jawdropping :O I bet it takes a guy 20+ hours per episode to draw all those layers and animate them.

[@Nanpa0]

Best El Niño description I ever heard. Thank you.

[@televisonator]

Hey smarter every day, why aren't you using SI Units?

[@deadtree598]

+televisonator Based in America.

[@televisonator]

But even in Amerika science is using si

[@arousedsquirrel2429]

+Raziel Qwazar Also the rest of the world is intelligent enough to convert the imperial units to SI. I am not sure about Americans in general being capable of doing the opposite.

[@arousedsquirrel2429]

iamihop When exactly did I refer to SI being harder to use? It isn't.

[@arousedsquirrel2429]

iamihop No one said SI is harder to use, only that Americans use the imperial system. My brain isn't much superior, just my perception of the world. And most Americans have no idea how to convert between imperial and SI.

[@jpowvens]

People are going to use you talking about how hard it is to predict weather as an argument for why global climate change is not real.

[@Rodman200818]

+Jon Powvens good, then he can make a video about the difference between weather and climate, and hereby explain to those people what is going on (local vs global changes too).

[@jpowvens]

+Rodrigo García Álvarez That would be a great video. I hope you are right.

[@cantstopthefunk22]

+Jon Powvens Honestly it's a valid argument. Current projections of climate are based on these types of models that he proved can't be reliable. No one with any ounce of intelligence is claiming the climate isn't changing, the question is to what extent, and to what extend humans are adding to the problem. Also whether the proponents of catastrophic global warming have a leg to stand on if models are unpredictable

[@Elround4]

+Jon Powvens It already happened, on this comment section four hours ago. *:* D

[@Elround4]

+James Popp Well said. Not to mention that the political side of this issue is going hilariously overkill in both directions (i.e. those who think the climate doesn't change at all to those who think the ocean is going to literally boil away). *:* D

[@rhaegartargaryen9315]

Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Chaos is El Niño.

[@serriayisasia]

FINALLY! Someone ACTUALLY explained this! I've lived nearly 20 years confused as to what the hell El Nino was even if I looked it up. It seems a bit over hyped but I'm not sure. I live in the Northeast and don't really feel much of a difference. P.S. notice from the future, we still got a lot of snow :I. In fact a lot of people got a lot of snow this year.

[@reyzuna]

it's just a random name that weather fort cast want so that they could bring you news because they had nothing to report.

[@IamSewi]

I remember one year of my childhood when the weather went crazy here in Peru and I couldn't understand why. Such a good video!

[@gauravvishwa2039]

The ad that I saw before the video was better than the video. It's about "Our earth has very less metals to use, why don't we mine on asteroids" And they gave really interesting results, I am amazed!!!

[@maharashtraesters8788]

Your language is very succinct, with words pretty well chosen. Thanx a lot. It somewhat cleared my fundas about "El Nino" to some extent. wonder if I can use some of your words and phrases in an article I'm writing.

[@kav5906]

I wish I was taught by you when at school and uni 🥺 the best and simplest explanation always!

[@AvangionQ]

Best simplified explanation of Chaos Theory I've heard to date ... :-)

[@sszaaron]

You left a link to The Exploratorium (my work) in your description! Woo!

[@LanceGalaura]

I have been on an EL Nino when the very cold water dropped it evaporated quickly

[@BunyipAndler]

Great video, but you converted fahrenheit to celsius. Why not inches to centimeters?

[@unvergebeneid]

+BunyipAndler Millimeters actually. That's how rain is usually measured (because 1mm of rain = 1l of rain per m²). But yeah, I was wondering the same thing. But the last time I saw a 40-inch TV it was pretty big. So I guess it was a lot of rain.

[@tapeteavoador]

That was awesome. Thanks and keep up the good work!

[@bekkaanneee]

when i was young, my sister, cousin, and i were spending the night at our grandparents' house. my sister and cousin didn't want me to sleep in the same room as them (i was the baby) so they tried to scare me by telling me about the horrible El Niño, a super villain who controlled the weather and drove around in a van. terrified me for years :/

[@st.stargell1154]

This was amazing.. I love the Weather it’s my passion.. please do more Weather related videos

[@NeonsStyleHD]

El Nino is a strange attractor in chaos theory. btw cool Henons loop.

[@miranda9691]

this video was awesome, keep up the good work

[@Agherr08]

Great, clear explanation

[@ianism3]

fun fact: the largest ice storm (rain that freezes into ice when it hits the ground) ever recorded occurred in southeastern Canada and northeastern US in January 1998. it coated everything in a layer of ice ~10 cm thick, destroying power lines and around 75% of trees. a few million people lost power for 3+ weeks during the middle of winter. I mostly just remember school being cancelled and having to clean up destroyed trees after.

[@blacksentry1437]

You would be a very good science teacher.

[@thegoodlydragon7452]

Great video!!

[@denchua]

This video is underrated.

[@William102582]

More on chaos theory pls. thanks.

[@josie.c4952]

Awesome I Love Your Channel Science is Super!:)

[@tenaciousdean6179]

Oh my goodness, I think the science behind Game of Thrones' whether has just been explained by something else that can't be explained

[@Miscq309]

rest in peace Criss Farley the El Niño guy 0:38

[@boomtreya5827]

loved this. the weather is like really crazy right now. greetings from peru :D

[@ananixon]

Wow, that's very interesting! What does chaos theory mean for predicting the consequences of climate change? Are those predictions mere guesses?

[@besmart]

Weather is not climate. Long term trends aren't subject to the localized uncertainty of questions like "will it rain here next week?"

[@arousedsquirrel2429]

+dracosfire7 Many "people".

[@RoboBoddicker]

+ananixon The longer the timescale and the wider the area the less chaos affects the predictions. It's the same reason why meteorologists can tell you in October that the US will have a mild winter, but they couldn't tell you if it's going to snow in Pittsburgh on December 19th.

[@ihateyou-3042]

I really want some more snow in mammoth. That would make my year.

[@pepperswirlex2307]

Until now I have never heard of El Niño

[@dhuh943]

BEST. INTRO. OF. ALL. TIME.

[@momsspaghetti9970]

Is it possible to harness this energy created by the El Ñino?

[@unpopuIaropinion]

3:00 why first money and then life? Is money now more important? Also knowing the weather the previous day kinda ruins the surprise for me .

[@TheRonster9319]

He said money first to put a larger emphasis on life. It's not just about the order of the words but the emphasis put on them. I don't know if you're a native English speaker or not but that's usually how English works

[@zeromailss]

El Niño? its sounds pretty cute, might as well name my kid Elni

[@supma331]

Damn whenever we see the pacific ocean in maps its cut up, the image at 0:57 really shows how large it is, almost covering half of the earth

[@lezgetdisbread6266]

Philippines experienced Mild El Ni(n)o for about a year now. La Ni(n)a comes up on December 2016. :( I remembered Typhoon Haiyan destroyed our Christmas last November 2013.

[@danielfarfudinov3193]

Temperatures in Mongolia reach 42C ... What else is new?

[@Twizzzle]

You should do one on Heisenberg's uncertainly principle too.

[@katiesilvay489]

There was a hurricane in Long Island, NY so bad that the one island became 2 instead and then people built houses on the beach by the split. I wonder what will happen to their houses???

[@amehak1922]

Normally in Tennessee, it rains once or twice a week or more in 2 periods per year: April-May and September-November. 2016, it rained 3-5 days a week for 13 months april2016 until May 2017.

[@ryanvess6162]

I'm in Delaware and cut grass and take care of pools. The whole summer of 2016 and 2017 was wet as hell. With maybe one ten day drought.

[@gonetea4081]

the best part of science is making up names

[@maevahatet8580]

Hi Joe, I would like to thank you for your interesting and so funny videos. Thanks to you, I learn both english and science ! Yes, because I am french and I work in tax law... No link with science but I stay curious :) Bye bye

[@krmaheshvit]

Thank you

[@SpoopTheSpoopster]

Bruce Lee to Godzilla? That aint escalation.

[@arnoldbiggins9570]

More of a descent

[@SpoopTheSpoopster]

Toats.

[@juanponceman4337]

I hope ur joking...

[@sirnate9065]

I'm on the east coast and haven't heard a thing about el nino, all we hear about is hurricane Joaquin

[@atomikduke]

Here in Peru the government is investing a lot of money in trying to prevent major losses, but losses will happen

[@wurttmapper2200]

Your ñ pronunciation is really accurate

[@phishfearme2]

in 1961 Ed Lorenz was running simulations on his computer - was that on an 80-86? macintosh? CDC7600 mainframe? what was available in 1961 that could even handle the most basic models?

[@thecomprehensionhub4612]

I feel like the properties of Quantum Physics are related to the anomalies in weather. We see both a mix of predictable cycles mixed in with chaotic uncertainty.

[@Real_Halo_MC]

"El Nino is all over the news". I hadn't heard about it till now xDD

[@REbones714]

If you're in SoCal then it's almost a daily news thing, quite annoying -_-

[@akashdtx]

I came to restore order to random bits of information, so that I might understand "el nino"; now it's all in complete Chaos.

[@mxm6]

while lots of snow is desctructive and annoying as hell, its always nice to see fresh snow

[@susanciambrano5603]

upload more often

[@rfvtgbzhn]

I have on my phone a very short time prediction that is supposed to be based on weather radar and say exactly when it is raining and when not for the next 2 hours. It once said that rain should stop in the next minute for 50 minutes and once it rained for like 15 minutes (light, but considerable) while the forecast said that it's not raining and should never rain in the next 2 hours. Is this a general problem or is just this particular forecast bad? I might add that all this was also in a city where there is an official weather station every few km and the land in the city is more or less flat.

[@smith2luke]

I think measurement error isn't really uncertainty "built into this universe." But if you're talking about the fundamental uncertainties of physical quantities of those particles, then it's true uncertainty based on the uncertainty principle.

[@draken68]

Great information except you showed Kenya and Indonesia being affected by El Niño type currents. They are affected by the Indian Ocean dipole, while they are usually aligned they don't have to be. I live in Australia west of the great dividing range. Our meteorologists always say El Niño is here massive droughts. While mostly correct but the rain that falls here comes from the bay of Bengal not the pacific ocean. These basic facts are why it is so hard for me to believe in climate change (what happened to global warming). I live 300km (200mi) inland from the pacific ocean yet i only receive rainfall from there once or twice a decade. The rain i receive comes across 3000+ km of desert yet no weather report tells me what the water temp in the indian ocean is doing. the most reliable weather site I have found is Scandinavian that makes sense. :)

[@cavalrycome]

+Brian Howarth "Global warming" is the cause of "climate change". Both terms have been in use for decades even if climate change deniers have tried to present the term "climate change" as some sort of replacement for "global warming" as if climate scientists are trying to save face in the absence of supporting temperature data or something. No, average global temperatures are still definitely rising, and they are still definitely the cause of climate change. How these changes will manifest in terms of sea ice, severe weather events in specific places, and so on is much harder to predict, but despite what deniers like to pretend, the accuracy of these predictions isn't a test of whether overall trends in climate change are real.

[@MechanicsStudents]

Is it ending now? It was warm in New York, and it was raining and snowing in NY

[@oddowlomen9921]

Like boosting for half a second too long in Kerbal Space Program, and ending up slingshoting the moon you were trying to land on.

[@jmcosmos]

I KNEW it was all the fault of the Quantum Weather Butterfly (Papilio tempestae). "The Quantum Weather Butterfly is an undistinguished yellow color, although the Mandelbrot patterns on the wings are of considerable interest."

[@Bill_Brasky]

Chris Farley? Automatic like!

[@df2429]

I remember that El Niño hit California it was the worst

[@mannyfernandez1713]

Hey Joe, ive got a quesrion, is it true that the graphs we get when we plug in values to confirm Chaos Theory, end up being fractals?

[@animo005]

hmm interesting. Some people believe that is impossible to compute such things, meanwhile others believe that full reality could be a simulation. And yeah, the plural of El Niño would be Los Niños :)

[@HoodlumRooster]

I can predict the weather. I get a headache within 5-10 hours before it gets stormy or heavy rain starts to fall.

[@rangkara7201]

5:24 put your cursor with the bounching particles then move it around and see it gone.

OK, but here in the future no browser has support for Java applets anymore. Don't you have a JavaScript example?

[@reynaswaffle]

oh ma gawd.. I just learned el nino and la nina in social studies 😂 yes, Indonesia's social studies are weird

[@MrLk2389]

@it'sokaytobesmart, I'm not a climate change denier but... how does the chaos theory cause weather to be so hard to predict days in advance not also make climate equally hard to calculate into the future? Thanks

[@zertilus]

So imagine one day in the far future of intelligence and technology, we DO find a trick to somehow track down the location and velocity of every particle in our universe (obviously not any time soon, but perhaps in a few billion years)and run them through an accurate simulation of the laws of physics. Would it be possible that then, if everything was just right, we could predict things that would previously be impossible due to chaos theory? Just a thought.

[@florenciachiappero1814]

It would be very beneficial to all subscribers of other countries that do not handle very well the language, subtitled launch a channel , because the vocabulary is generally very specific and the translations are not good ... The topics are very interesting and we all want to stay curious! :)

[@lianecarne9086]

it was snowing in the gobe desert a few years ago

[@NVRMR08]

Makes perfect sense you know exactly how much the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs weights

[@whiterottenrabbit]

I said it before and I say it again: thank goodness your videos are not of this stupidly erratic fast cut style where the pause between sentences, i.e. cuts, is way shorter than the pause between words within a sentence, while the presenter is already speaking excessively fast. I could never understand why videos like these became so popular on KZbin, for fuck's sake... Please keep up the good work and please retain your calm, normal pace!

[@lilil6753]

I thought about that Columbus‘s ship when i first saw the title😂

[@QD77]

We don't blame the weatherperson for not KNOWING, but for PRETENDING to know, and for telling "in two weeks it will rain and be 20°C" when they don't even have a clue for 4-5 days from now... They should always say that their simulations predict that it will likely be that way...

[@markholm7050]

If you had spent more time filling out the discussion of el niño and skipped the shaky butterfly concept, I could recommend this video. As it is, I can not.

[@menoleya]

damn tho. joaqim really shrecked up the new jersey bay area. lucky that i am a pennsylvanian

[@harryfaiez]

can you make a video about the golden ratio? it was confusing when i learned it in my class thanks! :)

[@NTclaymore]

I cant understand all this. I use the metric system..

[@rumfordc]

+NTclaymore translated, it said: "el nino is chaos! hot and cold at the same time! ahhh we dont know what's happening ahhh, a billion gagillion arbitray units of scary are flying around the world! now you're smart." hope that helps

[@olofnoaksson1387]

I might be wrong here but shouldn't it be possible to predict weather more accurately with increased observations and better computer models? It seems like you're saying that there are too many variables, but there isn't an infinite amount. For now it might as well be but who knows what future discoveries might bring? I'm still hoping for the weather control devices in Star trek is what I'm saying basically :)

[@masonsilvers6789]

Joe:ok, lets all take a chill pill My cat: meow row.

[@JamesIT777]

a general question: is there a specific reason why you guys - as scientists - insist on using non-standardized units of the imperial system (i.e. inches) rather than the globally accepted metric units?

[@emmettturner9452]

I think you mean the other side of the Indian Ocean when you went from Kenya to Indonesia.

[@rateater420]

My country is experiencing el nino. May was 42°C

[@rateater420]

Summer sucked In our country summer is from april-may

[@axlychee3113]

What is the name of the orchestral track at 3:00? Thanks!

[@user-cr8bd9qk1r]

Good!

[@TheThagenesis]

it's not unly the uncertainty. Quantum physics als tells us we're always changing the System when we're measuring it

[@kleinsalescopygeek7313]

Wait let me think of a good headline... "The John Cena of all El ñino"

[@romeshsrivastava2474]

Wasn't it Poincare who discovered chaos in the three body problem?