On the chaotic behavior and predictability of the real atmosphere

In this paper the concept of Chaos and its applications to the study of predictability theory is introduced. The author's attempt is to give a general overview of ideas and methods involved in this problem to scientists, who are interested in the problem of predictability but not familiar with the theory of chaos. The problem is discussed in 4 sections. In the first section, the concept of chaos and the study methods are outlined briefly; in the second section, the methods of quantitatively measuring the main characteristics of chaos which are the basis for the predictability theory are in troduced; the third section discusses the time series analysis for directly studying chaotic phenomena in practical problems; and the last section presents some research results on the chaotic characteristics and the predictability of the real atmosphere. This project is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China.