Due to these chaotic systems meteorologists have difficulty predicting the weather far in advance. Lorenz encountered a problem while running a computer program which used twelve equations to modeled the weather. The computer used six decimal points, but the printouts rounded to three. In the years after this discover Lorenz investigated chaotic systems, simplifying the complex weather systems to fairly simple equations which still behaved in a chaotic manner. Lorenz had difficulty publishing his findings in a suitable journal because he was trained as a meteorologist.
Today there are two fields of thought on the mathematics of weather and environmental forecasting.
The oldest approach involves the collection of historical weather patterns and data, and correlating what will proceed. This imperial-statistical method can prove to be very labor intensive and result in vague, inaccurate forecasts. Typical weather forecasting also used the empirical-statistical method until several years ago, it was then replaced by the reductionist approach. The second, more resent approach, has evolved from the work of Lorenz and the development of computers. The reductionist approach strives to reduce weather to several simple, often chaotic, forces or systems, often represented by mathematical, and chaotic equations.