Butterfly effects
Original article: https://doi.org/10.1063/pt.ifge.djjy
Summary
This Physics Today letter responds to discussion of the popular butterfly-effect metaphor. Pielke, Shen, and Zeng distinguish the familiar tornado metaphor from the mathematical idea of sensitive dependence on initial conditions. They argue that a butterfly-scale disturbance is dissipated too strongly to directly cause a tornado at continental distance, while still recognizing the importance of sensitivity, finite predictability, and multiscale processes in Lorenz-model studies.
