From the London Times, signs that the Met Office might need a refresher course in basic forecasting skills and bonuses revoked. While I’m often critical of NOAA’s climate issues, the forecasts from NOAA put The Met Office to shame in terms of accuracy and detail. And, NOAA staffers don’t get bonuses, period.
Excerpts from the Times article by Steven Swinford
BUFFETED by complaints about its inaccurate weather forecasts, the Met Office now faces being dumped by the BBC after almost 90 years.
The Met Office contract with the BBC expires in April and the broadcaster has begun talks with Metra, the national forecaster for New Zealand, as a possible alternative.
The BBC put the contract out to tender to ensure “best value for money”, but its timing coincides with a storm over the Met Office’s accuracy.
Last July the state-owned forecaster’s predictions for a “barbecue summer” turned into a washout. And its forecast for a mild winter attracted derision when temperatures recently plunged as low as -22C.
Last week the Met Office failed to predict heavy snowfall in the southeast that brought traffic to a standstill. This weekend a YouGov poll for The Sunday Times reveals that 74% of people believe its forecasts are generally inaccurate.
By contrast, many commercial rivals got their predictions for winter right. They benefit from weather forecasts produced by a panel of six different data providers, including the Met Office.
Despite criticism, staff at the Met Office are still in line to share a bonus pot of more than £1m. Seasonal forecasts, such as the one made in September, are not included in its performance targets.
John Hirst, the chief executive of the Met Office, insisted last week that recent forecasts had been “very good” and blamed the public for not heeding snow warnings. He received a bonus of almost £40,000 in 2008-09.
Metra already produces graphics for the BBC, including the 3-D weather map that made some viewers feel sick when it was introduced in 2005. Weather Commerce, Metra’s UK subsidiary, has already usurped the Met Office in supplying forecasts to Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Marks & Spencer and Waitrose.
…
The Met Office was bullish, though, saying: “We have always been in the strongest position to provide the BBC with accurate and detailed weather forecasts and warnings for the UK.”
h/t to many WUWT readers
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I wonder if the Met office works like this joke. Except it thought it was going to be hot.
The Indians asked their Chief in autumn if the winter was going to be cold or not. Not really knowing an answer, the chief replies that the winter was going to be cold and that the members of the village were to collect wood to be prepared.
Being a good leader, he then went to the next phone booth and called the National Weather Service and asked, “Is this winter to be cold?”
The man on the phone responded, “This winter is going to be quite cold indeed.”
So the Chief went back to speed up his people to collect even more wood to be prepared. A week later he called the National Weather Service again, “Is it going to be a very cold winter?”
“Yes”, the man replied, “it’s going to be a very cold winter.”
So the Chief goes back to his people and orders them to go and find every scrap of wood they can find. Two weeks later he calls the National Weather Service again: “Are you absolutely sure that the
winter is going to be very cold?”
“Absolutely,” the man replies, “the Indians are collecting wood like crazy!”
There’s a close special election on Tuesday for the vacant Mass. Senate seat. If the GOP wins, the Dems won’t be able to override a filibuster.
Smokey (11:52:19) :
“If it were not for the internet, the populace would never hear another point of view than AGW. It doesn’t take much foresight to see that an upcoming target for government censorship will be the internet. They won’t call it what it is – censorship – but that’s what it will be. Control of the population, along with the ability to radically increase taxes, requires control of all major media outlets.”
I fear you are right; They will tell us it is for our own good
i.e. To stop porn in order to protect children or to stop terrorism but will result in blanket control.
Stefan (10:26:49), I agree with you for the most part. However, CO2 is not really new to the climate system. It’s hard to argue that nothing can be known about its influence even though it may be true. Put yourself in the position of arguing the other side. Remember the claim is 90% certainty. You could simply claim that the 10% covers this issue.
That’s why I think it’s better to avoid this issue, the real problem is the uncertainty of what they claim to know. Things like the 2035 vs. 2350 issue show incompetence. ClimateGate shows many problems. The march of thermometers throws even more doubt on the honesty of the researchers. These are the things I think we need to focus on.
I live in New Zealand an i have never herd of Metra . is their a link to their site?.
If you live in New Zealand as I do, and you want a long term weather forecast you sure as hell do not go to the NZ Met Service. The best place is Ken Ring’s site…..predictweather.co.nz……he gets it right more often than not. He is also an AGW is a SCAM SUPPORTER (as anybody with a modicum of intelligence should be). And he insists that Met Services the World over cannot and never will be able to provide reliable long term forecasts while they persist in using their current FLAWED methods.
ok i found a bit out about Metra.
Metra Information Ltd, the commercial and international subsidiary of New Zealand’s public weather forecaster, MetService, has taken a 50% stake in a private UK forecasting company Weather Commerce with a view to a complete buy-out in three years.
This is the first time Metra has taken an equity position in a foreign forecaster although, it has a number of high profile customers in the UK, Europe, North America and the Middle East.
“This is a logical step for us,” says MetService chief executive Paul Reid
http://www.metra-info.com/weather_commerce
I wonder how many doctor of science degrees were awarded in the U.S.A and the U.K in the past few years on the basis of theses papers on physiogenic (naturally-caused) climate forcing as opposed to those on anthropogenic (human caused) climate forcing studies. I suspect that it may be almost impossible to obtain a degree in climate science these days if you do not accept, or pretend to accept, man as the primary driver of modern climate change.
The warming bias appears unmistakable to me and possibly approved at the highest levels?
*2010 winter temperatures are likely to be near or above average over much of Europe including the UK. Winter 2009/10 is likely to be milder than last year for the UK, but there is still a 1 in 7 chance of a cold winter.
* It is more likely than not that 2010 will be the warmest in the instrumental record, beating the previous record year which was 1998
*Met office decadal forecast predicts renewed warming after 2010 with about half the years to 2015 likely to be warmer globally than the warmest year on record [1998]
*They are also predicting global temperatures to rise by 4C by 2060 which translates to about 0.08C per year or 10 times faster than the last decade or last century [0.007 C/year]
.With all the past failed forecasts , the Met Office is like the investment dealer who asks you to invest with him for the long term .But if you had gone with him the last four years , you would have lost your shirt since their portfolio was negative during the previous four years .
Recently they are showing that they have little credibility in the short term or weekly forecasts. Previously they had no proven credibility for seasonal and long term projections as their models were still in the early unproven and development stage .
Unfortunately it is the people of UK who are hurt the most, having paid the salaries of these people and then having to suffer the unpredicted cold weather and the unprepared energy stocks and road preparation. A failed organization has within itself the seeds for its own destruction. It is truly amazing that the government seems to condone this type of activity at the tax payer’s expense since no action has been taken to-date to fix an obvious problem.
Even more hilarious is BBC backpedaling furiously to place blame on Met Office. Finger pointing, collapsing agendas, virtual chaos of intelligence… Loyalists, listen to your former subjects:
“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” Thomas Jefferson
Like in the USA… Round em up and prosecute for fraud. Start with Robert Napier, Chair Met Office and former head of… (wait) World Wildlife Fund.
NOTE: in any semblance of reality only a dysfunctional entity would appoint a conservationist to head a science office (with a billion dollar supercomputer and 1500 “staff” to run it.)
These people have set the cause of good environmentalism back 50 years.
There appears to the public at large a conscious or deliberate attempt at the Met Office “to hide the decline” or any mention of any possibility of cooling. All the focus is only on global warming.
The symptom of global warming fever is the complete inability to determine, detect, measure and report cooling of any kind. They will use terms like “negative global temperature trends ” or “neutral trend” or ” near zero warming ” or “slow natural variations” or” single –decade hiatus” and will go to any length in order to avoid using the term “cooling “. It looks like the fever has affected the entire Met Office and their forecasts. Just read their news release called , GLOBAL WARMING SET TO CONTINUE written in September just before the global warming failed not continue but went totally record cold over most of the Northern Hemisphere. Even when they are attempting to explain WHATS CAUSING THE COLD WEATHER in new release , they have to inject the global warming mantra like “climate change is taking place as the earth continues to warm” . Now why would you inject this statement in the middle of an ice storm weather explanation unless your prime focus is to be voice for the political AGW movement on global warming and be their official spokesman rather than a neutral weather organization telling the people about what weather to expect. Their focus seems on global warming politics mostly . No wonder they have gone off the track
Has the BBC found the Answer , to the decline ?
Weather with that delightful Kiwi accent will make it feel so much brighter than it really is .
A big thanks to all who answered – plenty to sift through – hope to write a good rebuttal and possibly gets a few others to start questioning before lapping up the AGW hype.
Nemesis (19:28:03) :
Smokey (11:52:19) :
“If it were not for the internet, the populace would never hear another point of view than AGW. It doesn’t take much foresight to see that an upcoming target for government censorship will be the internet. “
It may seem contradictory to conservatives but the U.S. Electronic Frontier Foundation works to defend internet independence (neutrality).
http://www.eff.org/
Of course a swift correction is to prosecute ringleaders of the AGW agenda. This requires documenting unlawful behavior, like doctoring data, destroying documents, stonewalling FOI requests. A good place to start would appear to be Mr. Pachauri – provided there is hard evidence of bad behavior.
A big thanks to all who answered