The Richardson's experiment was performed by British met. Lewis Fry Richardson in the early 1900's . He used mathematics to represent the atmosphere because it is physical, prob the first one to do that and think of it not as linear but multi-dimensional. He sent up weather ballons measured the atmosphere at many different levels and collected it, applied mathematic equations etc and came up with a forecast that wasn't right. There was too much info to handle prob even today, we solve for one variable and we come up with another. If the NHC collects to much info then the computers will simply not handle it properly and therefore make mistakes, nothing is perfect; as the models are only as good as the people that made them.