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
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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
“By their nature, forecasts become less accurate the further out we look.”
Unless, that is, when your predictions are beyond the lifetime of anyone around today, like say, 100 or so years. Then the predictions – oops sorry, *projections* – are, ahem, robust.
On the radio it was mentioned that they will actually continue with their 3-monthly forecasts for those who need longer-range predictions for commercial reasons.
So this is spin. The forecasts will continue but they won’t publicise them — unless they happen to be right, of course, when they can point to them and gloat.
I wonder also whether this approach will allow them to charge for the 3-monthly forecasts, so generating more income now their AGW consulting must be waning a little?
I have written to Julia giving here a receipe for a bacon sandwich that I always manage to screw up and it would seem to be so simple, two slices of bread four rashers of bacon (unsmoked) and three squirts of tomatoe sauce but what I dont have of course is a £35 million super computer and I am sure that it would make a difference. It must be because I havent removed the fat you know that 0.117% of the atmosphere that cause and of course the tomatoe sauce the equivalent of 0.066% that is our methane. Well I have just had a large Thai current so what out for thunder over the weekend, fart induced anthropomological global cockup that we are all paying for!
Maybe we should blitz Iraq again with depleted uranium just tomake sure it causes birth defects like three heads (Balls, Mandelson and Campbell) each with six fingers and 11 toes all poking Browns …….. the MET office is a complete farce but Gore God bless him has just won another doctorate doesnt that just make your Tennessee heart run over with the milk of human kindness, Gore we luv U!
David Wells
Until recently I had the local Met Office forecast on my computer toolbar. I soon realized that the forecast was changed almost daily, presumably to fit in with what actually happened, so that it was virtually useless.I decided to try Accuweather and the difference is astonishing. I would estimate it is 75% right at least.
“By their nature, forecasts become less accurate the further out we look.”
And, by their nature, scientists become less accurate the more blinded by bias they are.
Obviously I regret we won’t be able to start conversations in the pub by asking “How’s that barbecue summer working for you?”, or better still, while we were snowed-in a few weeks ago, “I see it’s turned out to be a barbecue winter too”.
I don’t know if it was hubris or simple leaden stupidity that made them think they could do three month forecasts, but they really shouldn’t have tried. The irony is that by eliminating a hopeless forecast they will be able to show they have increased their skill, and will probably encourage us to believe their climate forecasts are also skillful.
I’m sure that I read in someone’s blog that the BBC Pension Fund had £8 billion invested in Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change. Is it possible that the Met Office has money in the same place?
It’s frankly astounding that the Met Office have admitted that their seasonal forecasts are pretty much crap but still expect us to believe they can tell us what the climate will be like in 50-100 years.
I rather suspect this sudden concern about their accuracy is far less about their maintaining their credibility in AGW circles and far more to do with the suggestion that they might lose their BBC franchise.
The MO claim their weather forecasts are accurate up to 5 days and that their long term climate forecasts are accurate. How accurate are their 10 year climate forecasts?
From the Met Office Aug 2007:-
Climate scientists at the Met Office Hadley Centre will unveil the first decadal climate prediction model in a paper published on 10 August 2007 in the journal Science. The paper includes the Met Office’s prediction for annual global temperature to 2014.
Over the 10-year period as a whole, climate continues to warm and 2014 is likely to be 0.3 °C warmer than 2004. At least half of the years after 2009 are predicted to exceed the warmest year currently on record
These predictions are very relevant to businesses and policy-makers who will be able to respond to short-term climate change when making decisions today. The next decade is within many people’s understanding and brings home the reality of a changing climate.
when they say it will be sunny the next day i carry an umberella. if they say its going to rain i get out my shorts and tshirt..
if they state one thing i get ready for the opposite.
I wish the Danish Meteorological Institute would do the same. Their seasonal forecasts has not even been close once, during the last two years.
Luckily, they erase them quickly, with absolutely no follow-up, so no-one ever notice the errors.
During the last year, the focus on AGW on their site has also been less obvious. It is now much more balanced and subtle.
It could be damage control, and soon the will announce that they never believed in AGW. Funny world.
/Mikkel
I am sure Joe Bastardi and Accu Weather are delighted to hear this decision.
It provides AccuWeather with a competitive edge on the weather market of the UK, Scotland and Ireland.
Bravo
I am fed up to my back teeth with the Met Office continually claiming weather is not climate, so why use exactly the same model to predict weather AND climate?
As others have said & I have before, the 5-day forecast is a bit of a joke, because it virually changes on a daily basis, albiet very slightly but changes they are!
As we are just outside Pantomime season:-
Peter Stott, dressed in black with big black cape, wraps it around his body, does an evil laugh, & exits stage right! Enter Piers Corbyn, dressed in hero white, stage left!
Salt in wound time I think!
HAGWE everyone!
” NickB. (08:39:18) :
The GCMs, I thought they said they were ROBUST”
No I think they said “Rob us”
While I agree that seasonal forecasts will never be as accurate as short term forecasts, I do believe we can do seasonal forecasts that have some value. However, we can not do them they way the met office attempted to do them. We can not do them with deterministic computer models.
They key to seasonal forecasting is pattern recognition and the key to that is studying patterns and how they relate. That is very much different than what computers do.
Format two AGW petafloppers, and call me in the morning.
Let me paraphrase: “We’ve been scamming you guys for years. You’ve finally stuck your heads out the window and noticed something amiss. We now admit that any prediction past five days into the future was a non-scientific, highly speculative guess based in large part on religious belief in AGW theory. We promise to now confine ourselves to near-term forecasts for which proven science exists and we expect you to keep funding us as lavishly as before you caught us faking the science. We’d also like to keep that big, thumping, super-computer you bought us, even though it adds squat to those five-day predictions.”
By 2080 the climate (of Dorset) may resemble that of present day Portugal.
http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/about_us/news/2009/310309.aspx
Brian Johnson uk (08:47:58) :
I like that, I have noticed it quite a few times, perhaps we should start this as a permenant feature to disprove their Reliability for 5 day forecasts as well.
Just to embarass them a bit more.
How did you get those Scans, form the newspaper?
They don’t seem to be on their website.
The Met Office has been taken over by environmentalists, its weather forecasts have been twisted to support AGW. It’s time it went back to forecasting the weather and the environmentalist working there told to go and do there advocacy elsewhere.
As for the Stott papers they ‘ve just put out, pure propaganda, not an iota of science trying to get a proper relationship between CO2 in the atmosphere and temperture.
Well I just Googled my way through dozens of pages looking for “Climate Sensitivity” and “Steven schneider”, and definition of CS, and inventor of CS, and basically it seems that every single climate scientists has defined CS for himself, in terms of everything from CO2, to glaciers, and whatever. There seems to be as many definitions of climate sensitivity, as there are estimates of its value.
But I did find one paper that unequivocally defined it as the permanent increase in the mean global surface temperature due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 abundance. And the concensus seems to be that it’s exact value is 1.5 to 4.5 CO2 doubling^-1, which thereby establishes the 3:1 universal climatology fudge factor.
Maybe The Met Office can use the 3:1 fudge factor in their monthly weather predictions; excuse me, projections, to improve their batting average.
Indiana Bones (08:41:54) :
” no more “BBQ summers”
Great. What am I to do with my BBQ grill??
I’d keep it handy. Could be useful in staving off the likely cooling for the next couple of decades (or more).
Its now into March and the temperature in London is predicted to go down to -3C for the next two nights, which is exceptional. Winter simply won’t go away.
If that doesn’t work, maybe they could go to just forecasting what the weather will be in the next minute.
Charlie Barnes (08:11:10)
Quite. I predict that I might trip on the way home over the next two days, but that I shall not do so for the next 35 years thereafter, so robust is the prediction