A 2-week weather forecast may be as good as it gets
Last month, as much of the United States shivered in arctic cold, weather models predicted a seemingly implausible surge of balmy, springlike warmth. A week later, that unlikely forecast came true.
Science 22 Feb 2019: Vol. 363, Issue 6429, pp. 801 DOI: 10.1126/science.363.6429.801
Since the 1980s, they've added a new day of predictive power with each new decade. Today, the best forecasts run out to 10 days with real skill, leading meteorologists to wonder just how much further useful forecasts can go.
A new study suggests a humbling answer: another 4 or 5 days. In the midlatitudes, 2 weeks is “as close to be the ultimate limit as we can demonstrate,” says Fuqing Zhang, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University in State College who led the work, which will appear in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences
