Why is weather forecasting so difficult?

I would argue that every job is challenging, which is why this prediction may also be challenging.

The quality of weather forecasts has improved dramatically over the past 20 years. It's interesting to note that the 3-day forecasts that meteorologists provide today are far superior to the 1-day forecasts that they provided 20–30 years ago.

Additionally, they have far superior equipment for issuing early alerts for severe weather.

However, without numerical forecasting—which employs mathematical equations to predict weather—modern meteorologists would not be nearly as accurate. Numerical forecasting necessitates the use of powerful computers and a large amount of observational data.

The National Weather Service gathers billions of observations from geostationary and polar orbiting satellites, weather balloons, and ground stations every day; thousands of stations worldwide are linked and their data pooled, making even the most accurate forecasting of tomorrow's weather extremely difficult.

But perhaps we are not able to continuously monitor the atmosphere and absorb these data, or maybe computing power and storage severely limit our ability to analyze these data. The atmosphere is an important component of our planet, and in order to accurately predict the weather, we need to know exactly what is happening in every space at every second.

Weather forecasting is difficult due to the complexity of the Earth's atmosphere, which involves numerous interacting factors such as temperature, pressure, humidity, wind patterns, and the presence of various atmospheric phenomena like clouds and storms. Additionally, the atmosphere is constantly changing and influenced by both large-scale global systems and small-scale local conditions, making it challenging to accurately predict future weather conditions beyond a certain timeframe.