WUWT readers may recall the story by the Daily Mail about the new supercomputer.
The Met Office has caused a storm of controversy after it was revealed their £30million supercomputer designed to predict climate change is one of Britain’s worst polluters.
The massive machine – the UK’s most powerful computer with a whopping 15 million megabytes of memory – was installed in the Met Office’s headquarters in Exeter, Devon.
With a total peak performance approaching 1 PetaFlop — equivalent to over 100,000 PCs and over 30 times more powerful than what is in place today. It is capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second to feed data to 400 scientists and uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run – enough to power more than 1,000 homes.
With all that power, surely it must produce some quality digital reckoning.
Bishop Hill has located the “supposedly secret” winter forecast sent to the British government. The details of the forecast produced are nothing short of astounding.
When the kerfuffle over the Met Office’s winter forecast blew up, I wrote to the Quarmby team to see if they had actually received a copy of the Met Office’s cold-winter forecast, which was apparently sent to the Cabinet Office. It is alleged that the forecast should have provided sufficient warning to the government machine to ensure that everyone was ready for what happened in December.
Today, rather later than I expected, the Quarmby team have responded and have helpfully provided a copy of the forecast:
Met Office Initial Assessment of Risk for Winter 2010/11
This covers the months of November, December and January 2010/11, this will be updated monthly through the winter and so probabilities will change.
Temperature
3 in 10 chance of a mild start
3 in 10 chance of an average start
4 in 10 chance of a cold start
Precipitation
3 in 10 chance of a wet start
3 in 10 chance of an average start
4 in 10 chance of a dry start
Summary: There is an increased risk for a cold and wintry start to the winter season.
Looking further ahead beyond this assessment there are some indications of an increased risk of a mild end to the winter season.
Yes that seems clear, doesn’t it? Seeing the numbers produced, personally, I think this less expensive computer, using Digital Advanced Reckoning Technology (DART) can do the job of making odds equally well, using less power, less space, and less money:
I really love this one:
Looking further ahead beyond this assessment there are some indications of an increased risk of a mild end to the winter season.
I think its been done, something about “March coming in like a lion and out like a lamb” IIRC. But really, I never thought that a “mild end to winter” could be categorized as a “risk”.
But this forecast for the start of winter still doesn’t square with the Met Office map output.
Here’s the Met Office supercomputer enhanced model output forecast from October 2010: 
See the story about that controversy here and here
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Statistically equal chances of having a cold, wet, dry, hot, mild winter. Now that is what I call ‘skill’.
Julia Slingo of the Met Office is complaining that they don’t have nearly enough computing power. Four times more would be good…
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101230/full/news.2010.685.html
Unbelievable!
Looks to me you get better results simply doing it yourself….
http://letterdash.com/HenryP/assessment-of-global-warming-and-global-warming-caused-by-greenhouse-forcings-in-pretoria-south-africa
Hopefully, all of the heat it is generating is not going to waste this winter – that and the other hot air in the building.
This super computer has played a major role in heightened skeptical awareness. The excesses of its cost and pollution footprint, combined with its complete inability to predict, is Exhibit A for the gross scam perpetrated on the people of the world. This single device has made many more people take pause, and say “now wait a minute…”
I wonder if I could interest them in a subscription to “The Old Farmers Almanac” Small enough to put your bib overalls pocket and uses zero electricity. Oh, also more accurate and detailed . And it’s only $15.95/year + tax!
But wait! You also get a Free Recipe Calendar and Free Shipping.
From: http://www.almanac.com/
“Subscribe Today to The Old Farmer’s Almanac 2011 Hardcover Collector’s Edition! Get a FREE Gift Plus FREE Shipping!
YES! Enter my subscription to The Old Farmer’s Almanac! I’ll pay just $15.95! I’ll receive the 2011 Hardcover edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanac, plus A FREE GIFT: the Almanac’s 2011 Recipe Calendar, plus FREE SHIPPING! Plus, all the benefits of the Almanac’s Loyalty Program!**“
One thing we all tend to forget is that if we were ever to fight a global conventional war again, these types of bozos would be thrown out on their butt.
In wartime, you have to have people who know what they are doing when they are running things, in peacetime you can sort of get away with layers of bumbling incompetent bureaucrats.
The problem is the UK Met Office trough has now become so big with overpaid (with performance bonuses!!) bureaucrats feeding from it that it has taken on a life of its own. But this growing organism needs to be fed, so it uses climate scare stories, the way farmers use fertilisers to get better crop yields.
What a joke. How can any agency in the forecasting business issue a forecast like that? Sombody in Parliament should be putting some crosshairs on the Mets Office. Yes. It needs killing.
Are they stupid, or do they just think WE are stupid?
Maybe it’s a Rube Goldberg supercomputer… it consumes vast quantities of energy to blink lots of pretty lights but not much else.
“To err is human. To really foul things up, you need a computer.”
Unrealistic models, bad input data, and what do they expect for output?
Don’t worry the reputation for weather and climate predictions in the UK have been saved and no it’s not mystic Meg, no its not our Gav nor is it Nostradamus.
Yes! you guessed it, is the one and only Phil Jones weighing in at 15 ounces to the pound :-
“In an interview with Reuters today, Professor Phil Jones from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia said last year was the world’s second hottest behind 1998 in their temperature record going back to 1850.”
The boy done good again.
So we now know for sure that the Met Office was lying. What is clear from the above report is that there could have been no “secret warning” given to government to expect a sudden harsh winter.
It is not the computer’s fault: it is the buffoons using it.
Considering that it was the coldest December in Britain for 100 years this is a woeful forecast.
The Met Office computer works exactly as well as all the others …
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/the-seductiveness-of-models/
Pointman
Looking at those numbers another way, the Met forecast predicted a 40% chance of a cold dry start to winter.
That would have to be classified as a failure in any business.
1 petaflop of calculating power and it spits out whole numbers…no decimals? I feel gypped.
your DART analogy is flawed, it contains the possibility that a skilled operator could actually group his findings with much more accuracy than the Met office is capable.
You need to specify that the DARTS will be tossed by a chimpanzee from 10 paces to truly represent the skill on display currently.
@walt man says: January 21, 2011 at 10:23 am
So Corbyn might be out by a week or two. Met office may be able to give reasonable predictions for the next few days, but when it comes to long-range forecasting, they are out by a decade or two. Epic fail.
My old bosses would always ask me the risk of a dry hole and I would respond 50-50, either it is a dry hole or not, all the while thinking that they could not handle the truth.
I’ll send them an evenly balanced dice if they agree to stop wasting my taxes. Darts require skill and are open to experimenter bias.
Well if you use the stick in the sand method, it’s obvious what happened. All the ruckus caused them to shut down their 1.2 megaWatt room heater; just to save face; and the result was the big ice storm, because of the lack of heat in Britain.
Using Met Office techniques, I’ve come up with a real blockbuster of a forecast of my own:
It will get darker this evening, but there’s a good chance it will become lighter by morning.
…and not a supercomputer in sight! Pretty impressive, eh?
The Met Office Super Climate computer, after running non-stop for weeks on end came up with the ultimate answer to the puzzle that is the climate…the answer was:
And your not going to like this….
42.
(sarc off, and my thanks to Douglas Adams and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy at http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/answer.shtml)