The Met Office is to stop publishing seasonal forecasts, after it came in for criticism for failing to predict extreme weather.
It was berated for not foreseeing that the UK would suffer this cold winter or the last three wet summers in its seasonal forecasts.
The forecasts, four times a year, will be replaced by monthly predictions.
The Met Office said it decided to change its forecasting approach after carrying out customer research.
Explaining its decision, the Met Office released a statement which said: “By their nature, forecasts become less accurate the further out we look.
Tricky forecasts
“Although we can identify general patterns of weather, the science does not exist to allow an exact forecast beyond five days, or to absolutely promise a certain type of weather.
“As a result, ‘seasonal forecasts’ cannot be as precise as our short-term forecasts.”
It said the UK is one of the hardest places to provide forecasts for due to its “size and location”, making it “very hard to forecast much beyond a week”.
However, it said its short-term forecasts are “extremely accurate”.
The Met Office, based at Exeter in Devon, added that it would work towards developing the science of long range forecasting.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/8551416.stm
=============================================
I see this more as an insurance policy than one of admission of lack of skill. Though they are right, beyond about a week, entropy and chaos kicks in. About all anyonecan forecast seasonally with accuracy is:
Spring will be warmer than winter
Summer will be warmer than spring
Fall will be cooler than summer
Winter will be colder than fall
We’ll so how well they do with short-term monthly forecasts that are “extremely accurate”.
h/t to WUWT reader Robert of Ottawa
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So basically they are willing to admit that their 3-month forecasts are highly inaccurate due to the lack of understanding of all of the variables involved once the forecast period gets beyond about 5 days.
But… they still expect us to believe that their forecasts of what is going to happen climate-wise 5, 10, 25, or even 100 YEARS from now are valid forecasts.
I am sure there are some people that see no problem with that.
The Met Office
“Although we can identify general patterns of weather, the science does not exist to allow an exact forecast beyond five days, or to absolutely promise a certain type of weather.”
But they and others like them are happy to forecast a century or so ahead!
“… By their nature, forecasts become less accurate the further out we look.” Really? So they can’t nail 3 months out but 100 years is a lock?
“… the UK is one of the hardest places to provide forecasts for due to its “size and location”, making it “very hard to forecast much beyond a week”. Tthe UK is tough but the rest of the globe is easy?
“… short-term forecasts are “extremely accurate”
Direct proof that the Met has windows.
Unbelievable. I guess they don’t want to expose themselves to any more ridicule, if that were, indeed, possible now.
“The Mets new short term forecasts are EXTREMELY accurate”
Here is today’s forecast:
CLOUDY OTHERWISE CLEAR.
Anthony: I believe you’ve got a typo, Should the last sentence “We’ll so how well they…” actually be “We’ll see how well they…”?
BTW, I’ll miss their forecasts.
How is that new massive computer douing at the Met Office? It was purchased to do better and higher quality forecasts.
I predicted this. I also predict some funny comments on this thread.
LOL.
Did they really put scare quotes around “extremely accurate?”
That’s funny.
Tonight Dark, Tomorrow – light, and temperatures are expected.
Ok, now am I on the list to receive a Met Office Bonus for accurracy?
Too bad, their seasonal forecasts have been a lot of fun over the years.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/06/uks-met-office-blows-another-summer-forecast/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/10/mid-winter-report-card/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/27/the-uk-climate-impact-programme-forecasting-scoresheet/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/01/met-office-report-card-at-the-23-mark/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/12/tipping-point-reached-met-office-makes-blistering-attack-on-those-who-make-apocalyptic-climate-predictions/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/03/final-score-for-the-met-office-winter-forecast/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/30/the-met-office-uk-summer-forecast-mad-dogs-and-englishmen/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/08/met-office-summer-forecast-drowning-again/
Will they be putting their new super-duper “Deep Black” computer out on a skip in the near future?
Don’t be so harsh that you miss the rather amazing admission they have just made – they just publicly admitted that AGW is useless as a forecasting tool. And I believe they did this knowing what that means – their failures have been so public and so outrageous that they’ve now got to scramble to keep their funding and their own jobs. Ideology goes out the window when survival is on the line.
The cognitive dissonance between what they’ve just said and any claim of what climate will be in 50 or 100 years is so great that those claims are now discredited by the Met Office’s very own words. And they can’t walk them back, now that they’re out there.
All in all, another pretty significant nail in the coffin of Global Warming.
So for local weather forecasts max 5 days for accuracy (with a success rate well inferior to 100%, it would be interesting to find out just how accurate they are), a general idea going out as far as one month, but up to 100 years for the globe is sound science? It beggars the imagination.
And before anyone mentions that there is a difference between climate and weather, that argument would go further with me if those same folks weren’t filling the media with cries of global warming every time there was a hurricane, snowstorm, warm spell, cold snap or earthquake.
As I said on Bishop Hill, this is a bad move. Basically, they don’t want to make forecast within a timeframe that can be verified because it’s bad PR for their green agenda. The sad thing is, seasonal forecasts that can be verified add to our knowledge because we can learn from the errors on each forecast and improve on them in the future. Global warming forecasts only serve to scare the public because they will be entirely outdated by the time verification can be made.
“The Met Office is to stop publishing seasonal forecasts, after it came in for criticism for failing to predict extreme weather. ”
Not really, it was criticised for being PLAIN WRONG time after time after time …
(And always in the direction of extra warming).
This is progress. They have admitted that their models are pretty much worthless beyond a few days. The lack of ability to forecast weather should lead to the conclusion that they don’t know enough about the science to forecast climate. Or maybe not. They are a stubborn lot.
From this BBC news story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8462890.stm
An annual warming bias of 0.05C is equivalent to 5C/century. This is the same software that they told the parliamentary committee validated their climate model predications of significant warming on a century timescale.
Met Office: “… the science does not exist to allow an exact forecast beyond five days, …” But Piers Corbyn (http://www.weatheraction.com/) forecast that January and February would be cold cold cold back in October. He was wrong – the snow started just before Christmas, so he was a whole week out. Dear me! But then, back in October the Met Office was forecasting the warmest winter on record (or something like that). So the science *does* exist to produce much more accurate forecasts than the Met Office can achieve – if not “exact”. I wonder what kind of forecasting technique the Met Office uses? Could it be the same models that the IPCC uses?
I can imagine Piers Corbyn at the moment shaking with inward mirth – or rage – or a combination of both.
If it gets fuzzy after a week, just how hazy does it get by 2050 or whenever the glaciers are supposed to have melted by, the sea levels risen and London underwater?
It is NOT for failing to predict extreme weather. It is for failing to have any clue about how to do anything. This winter was NOT extreme weather. It was weather. And they had no clue. For the Nth time in a row….
Note how weather forecasting and climate projections interact in the Met Office. Apparently, according to Julia Slingo, seeing whether the daily weather forecast was OK is a good enough check on the models used for climate projections for 100 years. What does the fact that the Met office can’t get seasonal projections right tell us about the model?
She is the Met’s Chief Scientist and she says they use the SAME model for weather and climate. So her ‘testing the code twice a day’ for climate prediction verification amounts to nothing more than running the Met’s supercomputer twice a day to produce the daily weather forecast. If the daily weather forecast is sort of OK, then that means the model is OK for climate projections 100 years ahead. That’s all that’s needed for verfication!
Anyway, she can hang herself in her own words:
“I think what people find difficult to understand is what is this thing that we call a model? Well, it’s a huge computer code and it’s about solving the very fundamental equations of physics which describe the motion of the atmosphere, the motion of the oceans, how clouds form, how the land interacts with the sun’s rays, how it interacts with rainfall and so on and so on.
So what these models are is hundreds and thousands of lines of code which capture and represent our best understanding of how the climate system works. So they are not in a sense tuned to give the right answer, what they are representing is how weather, winds blow, rain forms and so forth, absolutely freely based on the fundamental laws of physics.
How do we know that they’re good? Well we continually test them against observations of the current climate in lots and lots of ways. At the Met Office we use the same model to make weather forecasts as we do to make our climate predictions, so every day we are testing the model and saying, ‘how well did we do with the weather forecast?’ We know that on many occasions our weather forecasts are incredibly skilful and that’s increasingly giving us confidence that the science in our models is fit to do this ‘crystal ball gazing’ into the future to say what will happen to our climate as we go really into uncharted territory. Because we are taking this planet to somewhere where it has never been before, or at least for millions of years.”
Incredible.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/in-depth/ask/julia-slingo.pdf
See how this woman, President of the Royal Meteorological Society, has completely changed her tune with respect to regional climate projection to be ‘on message’ with government propaganda since she joined the Met Office:
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/met-office-fraudcast/
But… but they were incorporating long term trends from the GCMs!
The GCMs, I thought they said they were ROBUST
How can this be?
/sarcasm off
I agree, as the Met office had admitted that their computer models do not work for seasonal forecasting, they should admit that these same models do not work for forecasting the weather for the next century either!!
By the way, Piers Corbyn and his Solar weather technique has been far better at seasonal forecasting than the Met office has- and with increasing precision. This winter he;-
1. Correctly forecast the snow and cold weather at the Copenhagen conference in december.
2. Forecast the heavy snow for Dec and Jan in the UK.
3. Forecast that the snow would return in Feb (it did).
4. Also forecast the current sunny “warm” (for March!) weather.
interestingly Piers has also forecast that the cold weather and snow will return by the middle/end of March for the UK. We will see about this one. All these forecasts were carried out 1 month, or more in advance, and his last five seasonal forecasts have all been correct.
“The Met Office is to stop publishing seasonal forecasts, after it came in for criticism for failing to predict extreme weather.”
I saw a Professor Slingo, Professor and Director,Centre for Global Atmospheric Modelling, Department of Meteorology, University of Reading , telling the Parliamentry Science and Technology Committee regarding the code for climate modelling that the same code is used for weather prediction and is tested twice per day.
Interestingly they seem happy for the code to predict extreme weather in 100 years time. Or maybe they’ve just not had long enough to test it or maybe just that they know none of us will be here to ridicule them in 100 years.