This is why it's so hard to predict the long-range weather forecast
Will we have a white Christmas? Pic: Shutterstock
It's a conundrum that every Irish bride will be familiar with.
You've found that special someone, resigned yourself to dealing with the in-laws from hell and mentally prepared yourself for a weekend of waving willy straws in Dingle at the hen.
All that remains? Picking a date when it's not going to rain for the big day itself.
Alas, it's here that even the most organised Bridezilla will find themselves stumped, because it's nigh on impossible, even in 2019, to accurately predict the long-range weather forecast.
Victoria Beckham. Pic: GC Images
We live in a world where our phones seem to know we're pregnant before we do, so why then can we still not determine a long-term weather forecast?
The answer, according to Dr Clifford Gilmore, a mathematical science researcher from UCC is simple, chaos.
Writing for RTÉ's Brainstorm, he's broken down the process of predicting the weather so as to help us better understand why long-term weather prediction has us stumped.
Pic: Rollingnews.ie
According to Dr Clifford, meteorologists continually collect various weather markers, such as temperature and air pressure, and enter the data into mathematical models of the Earth's atmosphere.
Next, simulations are run on supercomputers to produce weather forecasts.
But no matter what, even the most meticulous work can only ever be an approximation of reality.
Pic: PA Wire
With the weather, even the tiniest departure from the original approximations means that over time the weather forecast will begin to differ from the real weather.
This phenomenon goes by the catchy name of 'sensitive dependence on initial conditions,' or the more user-friendly 'butterfly effect.'
We live in a world of chaos, where things like traffic jams, water flow and the Brexit fiasco are constantly throwing a spanner in the works of our long-term predictions.
Crowd with umbrellas seen on Grafton Street. Pic: Getty Images
Our forecasts become less and less certain over time so that a chaotic system has a time limit for prediction accuracy.
For weather forecasts, it's generally thought that predictions up to ten days in advance are reliable.
But unlikely as it may seem, there's actually nothing random about chaos in the natural world – which makes it different from human chaos, of course.
Take the weather, for example. It's deterministic, so what happens next is determined by what's gone before.
Every step has been determined by the step before. It's just that where predictions are concerned, things are thrown off-kilter as each step differs – ever so slightly! – from what was predicted.
The cumulative effect of each little gap between prediction and reality means that our long-term predictions become less and less accurate over time.
Anna Geary's Child of Prague Statue Pic: Instagram @annagcork
Happily, scientists are working on new mathematical forecasts so we can better predict the long-term weather forecast.
But for now? It seems your best bet when trying to avoid rain on your wedding day is to stick a Child of Prague statue in your garden and cross all your fingers and toes!
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