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Fractal Weather Prediction
Judebert writes "Benoit Mandelbrot, the man responsible for much of the interest in fractals, spoke last month at the American Giophysical Union meeting. He explained how he has been using fractals to find order within complex systems in nature, such as coastlines and weather. (I thought he was dead, but apparently he's just been teaching at Yale.) Earth scientists have taken his fractal work to the point of forecasting the size, location, and windspeed of hurricanes at landfall. Their predictions are being made available to FEMA and other government agencies."
to see how well this technique actually works. Dr. Mandelbrot is, above all, a very good seller of himself.
-- SIGFPE
I'm sure that everything (including weather and coastlines) forms a pattern somehow, but I doubt we have ALL the input necessary to find it, whether it be with complex mathematics (fractals), or simple long lasting patterns. Until we can fully understand every little aspect of nature (from the moons gravitational influences to the air particles influence from each humans breath), and input it into a giant equation, I think we'll just have to use prediction algorithms and chaos theory....
To me, that is just too funny.
Prolly' not to any Yale w/men in the audience, though.
"You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas"
Sen. Davy Crocket to US Congress, Nov. 1, 1835
Personally, I'd like to see the results of applying his technique to earthquake prediction. Above all else (hurricanes, tornados, snow storms, volcanic eruptions, etc.) earthquakes have the possibility of doing the most damage to a large area in the shortest amount of time. Being able to predict the location, time, and magnitude of them would be a boon to human existence.
As for myself, I have no need for weather prediction. Cold today, cold tomorrow. The five day forecast: cold cold cold cold cold.
Dancin Santa
I'd vote for the prediction of CowboyNeal over any other catastrophe! even Katz!
This could be applied to Jupiter's red spot during the upcoming collision with the white spot. That would certainly give insight into Earth's hurricane formation zones and perhaps predict how global warming could aggrevate storm strength.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
The article insinuates that natural phenomena, including earthquakes, are predictable using Mandelbrot's fractal prediction technique.
The benefit of this technology is clear and discussion of those benefits is certainly on-topic.
D.S.
Of course, he wishes he were dead. }:-> .
Earth scientists have taken his fractal work to the point of forecasting the size, location, and windspeed of hurricanes at landfall.
Maybe Mandelbrot's death rumours started with an alleged claim of him doing field work?
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
Of course, the only problem is that you have to have accurate census and location information for every butterfly on the face of the planet in order for the forecast to be accurate.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
I kind of thought that applying fractals had sort of run its course so I am a bit surprised to see it re-appear in this context. There have been many applications of fractals for modeling atmospheric phenomenon over the years and equally as many for other geophysical applications such as earthquake fault modeling (visit any university library and you'll find numerous books on these topics
I'm guessing that this guy is using "fractal statistics" to describe the probability of the atmosphere moving into different states. I don't think that this necessarily implies that "The weather is fractal" or self-similar or whatever. The fractal statement is ususally at best an approximation anyway, and at worst completely untrue :).
But don't trust me too much on this (A good policy when reading slashdot posts!). All I know about fractal statistics is that it uses fractal function as it's distribution. Maybe someone else knows more about fractal statistics?