What reasoning is used in weather forecast and earthquake prediction?

Weather forecast is based on the basic theory and technology of atmospheric science to analyze and predict the future weather in a certain area. It is a comprehensive study based on the analysis of satellite cloud images and weather maps, combined with relevant meteorological data, terrain and seasonal characteristics, and mass experience. Accurate and timely weather forecast has great social and economic benefits for economic construction, national defense construction and ensuring the safety of people's lives and property.

According to the understanding of earthquake law, predict the time, place and intensity of future earthquakes. The basis of earthquake prediction is to understand the physical process of earthquake preparation and the changes of physical properties and mechanical state of crustal rocks during this process.

Therefore, it should be highly reliable, and inaccurate predictions will cause unnecessary panic among residents and bring losses to society and economy. However, it is very difficult to predict reliably, because human beings do not know enough about the causes and laws of earthquakes. Seismologists can't directly observe the interior of the earth, so they lack the observation data of earthquake preparation process and various factors affecting this process. Therefore, although the problem of earthquake prediction has been raised for a long time, the progress is slow. Scientists all over the world have made great efforts to this end, but so far they still can't accurately predict earthquakes, and at best they can only make very rough estimates.

The difficulty of earthquake prediction actually comes from people's ignorance of earthquakes. Teng Jiwen, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a researcher at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that earthquake prediction has three major difficulties:

One is the impenetrability of the earth's interior. Up to now, the deepest drilling is the ultra-deep drilling in kola peninsula, the former Soviet Union, which reaches 12km. Compared with the average radius of 6,370km on the earth, it is still "superficial" and still cannot solve the problem of direct observation of the earthquake source.

The description of earthquakes in academic circles still stays in the qualitative statement given by Li Siguang that "local underground energy will explode when it accumulates to a certain extent", but there is no quantitative statement. In other words, we don't know how much energy is needed to trigger an earthquake. The critical point of an earthquake is how much energy is gathered, which cannot be solved in a short time and has no theoretical support. Seismologists vividly compare this situation to the initial stage of understanding the earth. According to Chen Xuezhong, a researcher at the Institute of Earthquake Prediction, Seismological Bureau of China, what is the mechanism of earthquakes? We can't go underground to find out, just as heaven is easier to go underground.

The second is the infrequent occurrence of major earthquakes. Up to now, the research on precursory phenomena before large earthquakes is still in the stage of summarizing and studying various earthquake cases, lacking practical and reliable empirical laws necessary for establishing the theory of earthquake occurrence.

Thirdly, the complexity of seismic physical process. The earthquake process is a highly nonlinear and extremely complicated physical process. The complexity and variability of earthquake precursors may be closely related to the complexity of the geological environment in the source area and the high nonlinearity and complexity of the earthquake process.