Weather Eye with John Maunder

Weather dice were shown on the cover of my book (shown below) published in 1968.

The cover, which has two dice on a "monopoly board" with various weather symbols on each side of the dice, represent the reality that most, if not all, of the weather (and ultimately most of the climate), is ultimately related to how the weather dice fall.

Who or what controls the fall of the weather dice, and how significant the role of human induced activities is, is the ultimate question for all meteorologists and climate scientists.

However, if the "butterfly effect" (see below) is correct, we may really just have to continue to live, and adapt to whatever the weather and the climate provides.

* Professor Edward Lorenz (1917-2008) was a meteorologist who worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, who in 1972 presented an academic paper entitled "

Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?"

This paper resulted in the development of "chaos theory" or simply "the butterfly effect" which among other things, endeavours to explain why it is so hard to make good weather forecasts beyond about 10 days, and has implications for making good climate forecasts, particularly when considering the natural causes of climate change." For further details see http://www.answers.com/topic/Edward-Norton-Lorenz.