Guest post by Steven Goddard
On July 23, 2009 the UK Met Office issued their infamous winter forecast, ahead of the coldest winter in 50 years. It read:
“…Early indications are that winter temperatures are likely to be near or above average over much of Europe including the UK. For the UK, Winter 2009/10 is likely to be milder *(and wetter) than last year “.
This was recorded by Piers Corbyn at Weather Action and several other sites on July 23.
Source:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/science/creating/monthsahead/seasonal/2009/winter.html (released 23 July)
I remember reading the article on the Met Office web site at the time. But something funny happened on December 30, 2009. The Met Office over wrote that link with a new article titled “Forecast for the rest of Winter 2009/10” which has no mention of the original prediction. It now reads:
…for the rest of winter, over northern Europe including the UK, the chance of colder conditions is now 45%; there is a 30% chance of average and a 25% chance of milder conditions.
Their original warm winter forecast seems to have been scrubbed from the web site, and there are no longer any press releases dated July 23.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/index.html
Other sites which noted the July 23 Met Office article and link include:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3758
According to The Independent, the winter forecast seems to have been updated on September 29, but the Met Office no longer has any press releases with that date either.
The Met Office came under tremendous fire as a result of their disastrously bad winter prediction
The Big Question: Should the BBC drop the Met Office as its official weather forecaster? By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
And this lead them to drop their seasonal forecasts, which have been notoriously poor in recent years. What could have motivated them to destroy their original winter forecast?
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[From AW– Note: unlike government services in the USA, the UK Met Office gets bonuses, see their benefits package:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/recruitment/benefits.html So, this might be an incentive to remove poor work products.
The Times did a story about it last August after the BBQ summer fiasco: It’s raining bonuses at the Met Office
And the Met Office Chief, despite botched forecasts, got a 25% pay increase in January 2010, according to this Telegraph story:
Met Office chief receives 25 pc pay rise
The head of the Met Office, the national weather service which has been heavily criticised for getting its forecasts wrong, is now paid more than the Prime Minister, after receiving a 25 per cent pay rise.
]
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For the record, here are a few of of their other classic mis-predictions:
2007 – forecast to be the warmest year yet Wrong – la Nina hit and temperatures plummeted.
Met Office forecast for Summer 2007 Hot summer – Wrong – it was the wettest summer on record with cold daytime temperatures.
A typical British summer 2008 Wrong – it was the second wettest summer on record with cold daytime temperatures.
Trend of mild winters continues 2008 Wrong – it was the coldest winter in 15 years.
Summer forecast 2009 “Barbecue Summer” 2009 Wrong – another miserable washout of a summer.
Warming could push Greenland ice sheet beyond ‘tipping points’ Complete nonsense
Is that Winston Smith with the shredder?
This reminds me of 1984, the novel, not the year. Mr. Smith’s job was to modify past newspapers. Kinda the job some people at the Met Office seems to have.
Last year, I went to my daughter’s graduation in Dec. in Glasgow Scotland. Based on averages, and my husband’s testimony, I didn’t take the down coat, etc. I froze in the snow and ice. So I went shopping!! Sounds like this year has been even colder.
PS Sir Muir Russell presided over the graduation. Maybe he remembers how cold it was then.
Jack Simmons (18:16:42) :
You can’t have raw temperature data because USHCN temperature records are kept by the “Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center”
Their entire raison d’etre is to link temperature to carbon dioxide.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ushcn_map_interface.html
Ahhhh the Met Office rewriting history. Double plus good!
Thankyou Al for inventing the interwebby thing.
Hide the decline
Hide the sloppy forecasts.
How Inconvenient.
Didn’t The Met Office tell us their snazzy new computor would be so accurate and fast?
I’ve always wondered where Met Offices get their probabilities. I assume if there’s 10 guys in the office and 3 say it will be raining, there’s a 30% chance of rain.
What is peculiar with forecasts several days ahead, I’ve often seen increasing likelihoods of rain but decreasing forecast amounts … until on the day, there is a 100% certainty of rain but the amount is zero …
The wonderful thing about the internet is that by placing many years of mistakes side by side a bias is easily exposed. Now if only they would be honest this whole thing would go away.
Jon Jewett (17:01:12) : Re Orwell quotes. “There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent there will be no need of science.” Orwell, G, “1984”.
Well, is the Met susceptible to an FOI request for documents related to the decision and process of changing the winter forecast web page? A British citizen would have to do it, if there is one who wants to know why such a decision was made. If there is no documentation for such a decision, then there are other questions about why the government is paying to have random, unapproved, stuff put on public web sites.
So was this the sequence:
Prediction from computer modeling effort posted in July.
Prediction was apparently quite wrong in December.
Post-diction web pages published in January.
Bonuses all round in March
?
The Big Question: Should the BBC drop the Met Office as its official weather forecaster?
So, are they going to go to Piers Corbyn and Joe Bastardi instead? Many of us here know they are more accurate, far more.
more from Piers Corbyn on video about ‘The Met’, he gives his views on co2 and climate also
The comrads at newsspeak have no record of any such article. 4 = 5
Maybe the rewrite of history is why they need the giga watt super computer.
With 7500000000000000. That’s the amount of floating-point operations (or calculations) the Met Office’s supercomputer makes every minute in its … Wow think of the accuracy? They can clean up any mess they make with perfect hind casting.
Piers Corbyn talking about these same things in this post:
“….and they (i.e., The Met) will be wrong again for the winter of 09/010. Our forecast shows it’s very likely to be generally cold, or even very cold…in
Briton and in Ireland…..”
The ill-conceived carbon credits market & linked-fee gas tax in the Global Warming bill being drafted in the U.S. Senate: http://bit.ly/ccNpzp
The met folks must be the ones that had no job offers at graduation. This stuff is not hard. Subscribe to Piers Corbyn service and you would be geniuses. You would only have to spin the cold weather as AGW. Which is easy with the average college grad. Most electrician, plumbs, trades men don’t by it. Just the 6 figure California Hp type believe.
WUWT, ClimateAudit, et al could get together and sponsor a forecasting service runoff, and the winning competitor is in first place for public recommendations to receive forecasting contracts….
With apologies to Mark Twain: There are lies, damn lies–and bonus-backed lies.
TerryBixler (19:15:02) :
Clyde Tombaugh spent ten years doing the math to discover the planet Pluto. That same math could now be done in a tiny fraction of a second.
Disappearing web pages can also be done very quickly on computers, and NASA has even demonstrated skill at making planets disappear (Pluto.)
Seasonal forcasting is built on statistics and based on those it can give a liklyhood of for example a warm, avarage or a cold winter. But weather is chaotic and every year is unique. This makes it very difficult to make a forecast. Also the amount of years with historic statistic data is limited. If we had 1000 years of data the forcast would be better, but we will still only end up with a distribution of the liklyness of cold, average, warm and dry, normal, or wet weather. And if the statistics say 10% chance of cold weather in the coming winter, a cold winter could still occur and it would not automatically mean a wrongly made forecast. It would only mean that the winter weather differ from statistical mean scenario. Up until meiby 10 years ago no weathercentre wanted to do seasonal forecasting beacause it was to difficult. I am not sure exact which year they started and which weathercentre that was first. But there are limited experience in doing seasonal forcasts, and experience will give better results. It is a also risky business because people tend to think about the seasonal forcast the same way they do about a regular weather forcast, which is based on well known physics. The weather forcast for meiby the next 5 days will have a limited possible outcome, but forcasting temperature and precepitation 3-4 month ahead will give a possibility (that could be small) for almost every kind of weather. It is the same as if we would forecast the weather in 5 days by using data describing the current weather situation and then use statistics to guess parameters as temperature and precipitation 5 days later.
So we should not criticise them to much, we shoud think of the seasonal forcast as guesses based on physics and statistics. Also I think the meteorologists try their best and they are learning and gathering experience from each year.
Still I think it isfun that seasonal forecasts exist. I know that they are uncertain but I would miss them if they were not to be produced anymore.
Sorry for the long post. Meiby you got tired of me before finishing it, but I hope I made my point.
Good night everybody!
Mattias, Sweden (19:31:11) :
The Met Office does their seasonal forecasts by running their models six months into the future, similar to what NOAA’s CPC does. Both are usually less accurate than a random number generator.
The Way Back Machine didn’t archive it? Is that thing still around?
Steve Goddard (19:35:05) :
“Both are usually less accurate than a random number generator.”
I am not sure I agree about that, but I would not use it to plan any activities 😉
Can I be the first to say “hid the decline”?
“Amino Acids in Meteorites (19:10:02) :
The Big Question:”..
..is why would Piers Corbyn present himself like that? I drew a cartoon of a mad scientist in the 7th grade, (it was a project), and he looked just like him! A barber, or even a comb, would at least present that he has some sort of control. The “Einstein” look doesn’t quit cut it here in our world of convenient hygiene.