Encyclopedia (Jul 2022)

Three Kinds of Butterfly Effects within Lorenz Models

  • Bo-Wen Shen,
  • Roger A. Pielke,
  • Xubin Zeng,
  • Jialin Cui,
  • Sara Faghih-Naini,
  • Wei Paxson,
  • Robert Atlas

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia2030084
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 2, no. 3
pp. 1250 – 1259

Abstract

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Within Lorenz models, the three major kinds of butterfly effects (BEs) are the sensitive dependence on initial conditions (SDIC), the ability of a tiny perturbation to create an organized circulation at large distances, and the hypothetical role of small-scale processes in contributing to finite predictability, referred to as the first, second, and third kinds of butterfly effects (BE1, BE2, and BE3), respectively. A well-accepted definition of the butterfly effect is the BE1 with SDIC, which was rediscovered by Lorenz in 1963. In fact, the use of the term “butterfly” appeared in a conference presentation by Lorenz in 1972, when Lorenz introduced the BE2 as the metaphorical butterfly effect. In 2014, the so-called “real butterfly effect”, which is based on the features of Lorenz’s study in 1969, was introduced as the BE3.

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