Pinball Machine Analogy

To understand the concept of a climate model and to clarify the concept of climate predictions as compared to weather predictions, we consider the "pinball machine analogy".

The accompanying sketch shows the result of many outcomes of dropping balls through the pinball matrix. If the matrix is very large there will be many, many individual paths to the bottom. The exact positions of the pegs determine the distribution of balls at the bottom. A slight change in peg position will have some influence on the distribution of possible paths, with some pegs being more influential than others.

Pinball Climate Simulation.
(Takle, G.S., 1995)

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