Chaos to Control: Scientists Use a ‘Butterfly Attractor’ to Control and Change the Weather


The study’s findings promise multiple future applications where weather events can be better controlled, including the effects of climate change.Peer-Reviewed Publication

EUROPEAN GEOSCIENCES UNION

Figure 1. Phase space of the three-variable Lorenz model. (a) Lorenz’s butterfly attractor from the NR without control; (b) the NR under control (D D 0:05, T D d4T0e). Each dot shows every time step for 8000 steps.
IMAGE: FIGURE 1. PHASE SPACE OF THE THREE-VARIABLE LORENZ MODEL. (A) LORENZ’S BUTTERFLY ATTRACTOR FROM THE NR WITHOUT CONTROL; (B) THE NR UNDER CONTROL (D D 0:05, T D D4T0E). EACH DOT SHOWS EVERY TIME STEP FOR 8000 STEPS. view more  CREDIT: N/A

Decades of global research have sparked the big question: can we really control the weather? According to a study published today in the journal Nonlinear Processes of Geophysics, this may soon be our new reality.

Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Computational Science have used computer simulations to show that extreme weather phenomena can be controlled and modified by making small adjustments to variables in the weather system. They did this using a system called a “butterfly attractor” in chaos theory, which has one of two states— just like the wings of a butterfly— and switches back and forth between the two states depending on small changes in certain conditions. The study’s findings promise multiple applications in the future, where weather events can be better controlled, including the effects of climate change.

The butterfly attractor was first proposed by mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz, one of the founders of modern chaos theory. According to Lorenz, even the most minute, butterfly-scale changes to his computer weather models caused a range of weather outcomes from bright skies to raging storms, with no way to predict the final outcome. Since Lorenz first presented his study in 1972, his theory about the butterfly effect came to be widely popular and remains so even today. It includes the metaphor that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas.

Designed ‘nature’ and weather control
The RIKEN team began to investigate Lorenz’s chaos theory to create realistic possibilities for mitigating weather events such as torrential rain. They ran one weather simulation to act as ‘nature’ itself (the control), and then ran other simulations using small variations in variables describing the convection—how heat moves through the system. They soon discovered that they could control ‘nature’ to stay in a chosen regime without shifting to the other, i.e., in a chosen wing of Lorenz’s butterfly attractor, by adding small changes to ‘nature’.

“We have successfully built a new theory and methodology to study the controllability of weather,” said Takemasa Miyoshi of the RIKEN Center for Computational Science, who led the research team. “Based on observing the system simulation experiments used in previous studies, we were able to design an experiment to investigate predictability, on the assumption that the true values (nature) cannot be changed, but rather that we can change the idea of what can be changed (the object to be controlled).”

A future with weather control technology?
Although weather predictions have reached high levels of accuracy thanks to supercomputer-based simulations and data assimilation, scientists have long hoped to be able to control the weather. Climate change has further intensified research in this area, because of the increased risk of extreme weather events like torrential rain and storms.

Takemasa says this study opens the path to research into the controllability of weather and could soon lead to weather control technology. “If realized, this research could help us prevent and mitigate extreme windstorms, such as torrential rains and typhoons, whose risks are increasing with climate change.”

Looking to the future, he says, “In this case, we used an ideal low-dimensional model to develop a new theory, and in the future, we plan to use actual weather models to study the possible controllability of weather.”


JOURNAL

Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics

DOI

10.5194/npg-29-133-2022 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Control simulation experiment with Lorenz’s butterfly attractor

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

28-Mar-2022

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March 28, 2022 10:01 pm

a butterfly flapping it’s wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas.

Yeah but what if a butterfly flaps it’s wings during a tornado? Hey?? What then?

Reply to  Mike
March 29, 2022 7:05 am

Or it’s a moth? And what about size? Or it’s a bird, or bat, such as a Fruit-Bat? Then there are all those doors and hinged windows that have increased enormously in the last 100 years? When anyone opens a door or a window there is much more draft compared to a butterfly so all sorts of climate chaos is likely. And then there are books. Fortunately book reading has declined so there is much less disturbance to Gaia.

observa
March 28, 2022 10:42 pm

They were going to control the weather with solar and wind power but forgot about the intermittency with the fallacy of composition. Then it dawned on them they needed lots of storage and in boundless lithium they trusted-
US battery storage industry ‘at crisis point’ over supply chain crunch – The Latest in Solar Power | Clean Energy | Renewable Energy News (smartech.energy)
We tried to warn them that our ancestors weren’t that stoopid.but alas with their progeny.

Jery
Reply to  observa
March 28, 2022 11:05 pm

Operation indigo skyfold! This is true

Philip Mulholland
Reply to  Jery
March 29, 2022 12:27 am

Yawn

ihfan
Reply to  Jery
March 29, 2022 10:12 am

Operation indigo skyfold!

Operation Castle Bravo! It’s true!

observa
Reply to  observa
March 29, 2022 4:38 am

PS: Actually that’s a poor translation of this report here-
US battery storage industry ‘at crisis point’ over supply chain crunch (energy-storage.news)

Essentially the climate changers’ EV favourite meme that they’d follow Moore’s Law down in price is in serious trouble and the numpties never should have permitted wasting light weight lithium on stationary grid storage. However with high grid penetration of unreliables they required a quick storage fix but that only put off the day of reckoning and it’s come upon them now. Their kingdom now relies on finding economic alternatives pronto.

Jery
March 28, 2022 10:47 pm

Operation indigo skyfold! ..look it up.

MarkW
Reply to  Jery
March 29, 2022 8:23 am

If someone doesn’t believe you the first time, what makes you think repeating the same empty claim 30 more times will make a difference.
We all saw your claim the first time you made it. Repeatedly making the same claim does not convince people it just pisses them off and hopefully gets you banned. MODERATORS?

Jery
March 28, 2022 11:10 pm

TRUTH is operation indigo skyfold! Look it up no bs

Jery
Reply to  Jery
March 28, 2022 11:11 pm

Share info TRUTH matters in world of lies

Richard Page
Reply to  Jery
March 29, 2022 9:01 am

But do lies matter equally in a world of truth, eh?
And what is the nature of truth anyway?

Philip Mulholland
Reply to  Jery
March 29, 2022 12:27 am

Yawn

Philip Mulholland
Reply to  Philip Mulholland
March 29, 2022 12:29 am

Zzzzzz

Sara
Reply to  Jery
March 29, 2022 6:13 am

Get some counseling, Jery. You’re paranoid and delusional. Have a nice weekend.

michael hart
March 29, 2022 12:31 am

Beam me up, Scotty.

March 29, 2022 1:06 am

Load of crap. You cant have chaos theory unless you have an unstable system full of positive feedbacks.

Such systems are short lived and self destructive. Butterflies flapping wings do not cause tropical storms.

March 29, 2022 1:10 am

“We have successfully built a new theory and methodology to study the controllability of weather,” 
B*ll**ks

mikewaite
March 29, 2022 1:20 am

So, we can control the weather now can we ? and who exactly will be the “we” ? Biden, Xi or Putin?

H.R.
Reply to  mikewaite
March 29, 2022 4:52 am

Oooh! Oooh! Pick me! Pick me!

richardw
March 29, 2022 1:28 am

I’m not a scientist but it does strike me that the principles upon which many models like this are built assume some kind of linear response to variation. Empirical evidence would suggest that in fact the climate system behaves much more like a pulse wave modulation system, which tends to correct itself to a particular state, otherwise the climate would have spun out of control millennia ago. The effects of a butterfly’s wing flapping would itself be modulated by such a system.

March 29, 2022 1:31 am

Happy to be 70+ years old! I shall no be here to witness and suffer the consequences of all this madness.

IanE
Reply to  Joao Martins
March 29, 2022 7:34 am

Yes – I am not quite there yet, but it certainly seems that we have both lived through Peak Sanity!

Now, what was that statement by the UK’s former Chancellor and Prime Minister, Gordon Brown? Oh yes: “no more Boom and Bust”!

Sara
March 29, 2022 5:48 am

I keep telling them “Don’t mess with Mother Nature. She has a bad temper and a short fuse.”

It’s what I’ve said all along: it is about climate this or environment that: it’s about control of something they can’t control and don’t understand at all. And no, they aren’t going to stave off the next ice age or heat wave.

Can I point and giggle now?

Peter Morris
March 29, 2022 6:10 am

Bahahahahahahaaaaaaa!!!

Wow. As if we hadn’t lost the plot as a species already. Control the weather. That’s a good one!

2hotel9
March 29, 2022 6:59 am

Any idiot who thinks they can control weather needs to be injected with a massive dose of fentanyl.

Sara
Reply to  2hotel9
March 29, 2022 7:02 pm

Nahhh. Just shove them out the door in a heavy snowstorm and tell them they can come back inside when they get the snow (and ice) cleared off the roads and walkways and the scent of wood burning in a fireplace drives them nuts, because it means they’re out in the cold and everyone else is indoors, having warm cider and hot chocolate and pancakes with maple syrup and butter.

March 29, 2022 7:04 am

Utter nonsense. The fact you can use math to predict a massive impact from a tiny input does not change the laws of physics. Models aren’t reality, and their aren’t useful for much of anything till they have shown some ability to predict some important aspect of reality. Pretending that reality is what you find in a model is like pretending your retirement is assured because you have a lottery ticket in your pocket.

Ed Zuiderwijk
March 29, 2022 7:07 am

Haha. Another effusion by delusional fools, who arrogantly think they can share a table with the good Lord and control the weather, just like that.

Charles Higley
March 29, 2022 7:46 am

One tiny problem is that we need to have control over ALL of the other factors and effects in climate in order to have a single factor have a predictable effect on climate. As climate is constantly changing as the world turns, with half the world warming and the other half cooling at any given time and many stochastic factors. This is simply not possible.

ferdberple
March 29, 2022 7:47 am

The best part about weather modification is that no one can tell if it would have happened regatdless of the modification.

ferdberple
March 29, 2022 8:01 am

The n-body problem is the mathematical analog of n-dimensional chaos. A solution to the problem has eluded the best mathematical minds for centuries.

The average throw of a pair of dice is 7. The IPCC would have us believe that this is what will happen with temperature in the future, based on the average of all their models.

In reality, any value from 2 to 12 is possible and no solution has every been found to tell us what value will actually be thrown.

The True Nolan
March 29, 2022 8:04 am

I would suggest the the butterfly net pictured at the article’s top be used to catch the study’s authors.

MarkW
Reply to  The True Nolan
March 29, 2022 10:02 am

And if there is any room left, put Jery in there as well.

March 29, 2022 10:35 am

Not that it’s at all likely, but assuming they somehow manage to find a way to “prevent and mitigate extreme windstorms”, what would be the consequences of doing so?

They seem to have missed the entire point of the butterfly effect.

Martin Pinder
March 29, 2022 1:02 pm

The world’s full of perturbations. What happens if I stand up & flap my arms? When you get a different outcome with a small perturbation in your model, you have assumed that all else remains the same. This is probably not justified in the real world, there might be a butterfly somewhere other than in Brazil who decides to flap HIS wings at the same time.

Editor
March 29, 2022 1:18 pm

Total Bullocks!

The Butterfly Attractor of Lorenz, in its three variable model (L63 — which means Lorenz 1963) in no way represents the physical weather system of Earth.

Fooling around with the parameters while running iterations to restrict the resulting Strange Attractor to one or the other lobe is a cute mathematical/programmatic trick, but has no meaning in the real world — precisely for the same reasons that make it possible to do so.

Tweaking a toy model has no relation to tweaking the weather system — which itself is only vaguely understood at present. The weather system has no little knobs — no little “input modified parameter here” boxes.

Not Chicken Little
March 29, 2022 1:56 pm

“Although weather predictions have reached high levels of accuracy” ha ha ha! This is great comedy! Where I live they often can’t tell me if it’s going to rain or not 12 hours ahead of time and even less. Much less other weather phenomena that are often more destructive…

March 29, 2022 3:36 pm

I think the comments are a bit hard on these folk. There’s nothing wrong with trying to mathematically describe natural phenomena. The article does not make any huge claims other than this seems to be a way to describe weather patterns and it might be “a starting point for [more realistic simulations]” that might be helpful in the future. They aren’t making any real-world claims for their model, just that it’s an interesting starting point for further studies.

And it is. Nobody in the article is confusing models with reality. They are just creating another model for possible validation. And validated models *are* useful for predicting natural phenomena.

MarkMcD
March 29, 2022 7:03 pm

LMAO! Their models can’t even predict the past MEASUREMENTS even after they adjust the data input to try and make them work, but now they understand chaos theory enough to CONTROL the weather?

Yeah…

Right…

Just wondering… just how do they model chaos on binary computers? Which variables are ‘fixed’ and constants are not?

This is the equivlent of modifying 1 number in a Mandelbrot equation and claiming you have control of all fractal sets and STILL not being able to sensibly describe what the root of -1 is.