Predicting extreme avalanches in self-organized critical sandpiles.

In a finite-size Abelian sandpile model, extreme avalanches are repelling each other. Taking a time series of the avalanche size and using a decision variable derived from that, we predict the occurrence of a particularly large avalanche in the next time step. The larger the magnitude of these target avalanches, the better is their predictability. The predictability which is based on a finite-size effect, is discussed as a function of the system size.