Imagine that you would like to have a general idea of your health. What do you think your doctor does? They would not test how every little cell is doing. They will take samples of your blood and urine (and maybe others) and performs tests that would give indications of what is the state of your major body parts (heart, liver, kidneys, etc.). When we talk about climate, we basically do the same thing. We test for dynamics by using network theory and major modes of the climate system.

The numerical weather prediction (NWP) is facing the challenge of development bottleneck, and this article, via a comprehensive review on application of catastrophe theory to the atmospheric science for revealing the fundamental logic why the physics-based NWP methodology would be about to approach its end with some remedial measures suggested for avoiding its finality to occur, might be helpful to promote the enhancement of NWP forecasting accuracy so as to break its development bottleneck.