Butterfly effects
DOI: 10.1063/pt.oktn.zdwa
Palmer replies: While plausible, of course, the model of Roger Pielke, Bo-Wen Shen, and Xubin Zeng is nevertheless heuristic: As mentioned in my article, no rigorous proof or disproof of the real butterfly effect exists. Indeed, in contrast with the paper by Pielke and his coauthors, 1 recent published work 2 on spontaneous stochasticity in high Reynolds number flows (see reference 7 in my article ) suggests that not only may macroscopic circulations be sensitive to flaps of butterflies’ wings in finite time, but they may also be sensitive to the motions of individual molecules.
References
1. R. A. Pielke Sr, B.-W. Shen, X. Zeng, Weatherwise 77(3), 14 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1080/00431672.2024.2329521
2. D. Bandak, A. A. Mailybaev, G. L. Eyink, N. Goldenfeld, Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 104002 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.104002
More about the Authors
Tim Palmer. (tim.palmer@physics.ox.ac.uk) University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
