# Thermal convection, ensemble weather forecasting and distributed chaos

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the distributed chaos approach effectively describes thermal convection and atmospheric processes, supported by numerical simulations and ensemble weather forecast analyses, revealing insights into storm dynamics and predictability.

## Contribution

It introduces the application of the distributed chaos framework to thermal convection and atmospheric modeling, bridging numerical simulations with real-world weather forecasting.

## Key findings

- Distributed chaos describes thermal convection in layers and hemispheres.
- The approach applies to atmospheric processes in weather models.
- Ensemble forecasts show the relevance of chaos theory in storm prediction.

## Abstract

Results of direct numerical simulations have been used to show that intensive thermal convection in a horizontal layer and on a hemisphere can be described by the distributed chaos approach. The vorticity and helicity dominated distributed chaos were considered for this purpose. Results of numerical simulations of the Weather Research and Forecast Model (with the moist convection and with the Coriolis effect) and of the Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS) were also analysed to demonstrate applicability of this approach to the atmospheric processes. The ensemble forecasts of the real winter storms in the East Coast and Pacific Northwest as well as results of a simulation experiment with the multiscale storm-scale ensemble forecasts for eleven cases of mid-latitude convection in the central U.S. have been also discussed in this context.