How does the flapping of a butterfly's wings affect the weather?

Research by scientists shows that a butterfly's flap of its wings in Brazil can lead to a tornado in Texas.

The butterfly effect can have a major impact on weather. Photo: Open Mind.

The butterfly effect is a term used to describe a characteristic concept in chaos theory about the impact of initial conditions on the final change of a complex system.

In 1972, meteorologist and chaos theorist Edward Norton Lorenz presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science the impact of a butterfly's wing flap in Brazil on a tornado forming in Texas, USA.

In his earlier weather simulations, Lorenz accidentally discovered that even a small change in initial conditions could lead to very different consequences. Accordingly, a flap of a butterfly's wings could cause a change in initial conditions, resulting in major changes in weather such as tornadoes tens of thousands of kilometers away.

According toOpen Mind, the ratio of the kinetic energy of a butterfly's wing flap to the kinetic energy of the entire tornado is very small, so the butterfly does not directly impact the tornado in Texas. In other words, the kinetic energy generated by one butterfly's wing flap can be canceled out by the flap of another butterfly's wings.

According to chaos theory, however, weather results from millions of interconnected events, where a single flap of a butterfly's wings can initiate a cascade of changes in intensity, space, time, and kinetic energy.

According to VNE