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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Huh, but Folding@Home reaches over 6 Peta flops but has less than 350 000 nods consisting mainly PS3 game consoles.
So essentially for a fraction of the price they get more ‘an six times the speed Met Office’s expensive but “puny” lieeetle ‘puter. :p
One more time.
In my humble Apache opinion our cousins up in Chaco Canyon had a better weather, sun, moon prediction system on the rocks of the buttes together with the adobe buildings they constructed, some thousands of years ago. That and no use of energy at all other than a few sticks of wood to keep the elders warm as they studied the shadows and points thereon.
Insert an Apache four letter word here “—-” for them here.
Looks to me the only thing they are any use is to spend in useless ways tax money.
When the Met was asked about the claim that the current negative NAO may imply twenty to thirty more years of nasty winters they responded:
“There is a large amount of variability in the NAO… any long-term predictions of the NAO are speculative.” “That said, there are avenues of research being pursued to improve our understanding and ability to make such predictions in the future.”
You just cant make this stuff up.
Hmm…
Question: “What is the ideal average global temperature for earth?”
Answer: 42
Not sure we’ve got that quite right.
i wonder if someones hyperthreaded i7 laptop would still beat it in halo
walt man says:
January 21, 2011 at 10:23 am
Our dear Professor Corbyn perhaps is a secret Druid (at least he looks like one) using a better computing system: Stonehenge.
No joke: Stonehenge is about real science, the other it is only self conceit. Proofs?: A lot, here in WUWT.
Up here in the Heilan’s o’ Scotland, we jes look out the windae and mind th auld sayin’ “If ye can see yon hills it’s gonnae rain, if ye canna, it’s rainin!”
“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.”
I really get annoyed with the lazy way of expressing power values as the number of homes that could be supplied. The quoted value here means that a household can run on less than 1.2Kw.
Well, a friend of mine wanted to protect his household from blackouts by installing a petrol generator, so I installed a 2Kw Wolf. A good generator, and fine for a few lights and watching the TV. Unfortunately, during the adverts we decided to make a cup of tea. Ooops. A 2Kw kettle blew the generator trip!
INGSOC
That computer is physically bigger than the Univac 1108 we used in school in the 1960’s (which by today’s standards would not be equivalent to a PC laptop). But all the computing power in the world will not fix the garbage in-garbage out syndrome. I just love what I assume to be British terms such as “knackered”. Is that like snookered? Don’t believe I have heard that one before.
Who wants to bet the original super computer forecast was:
.33333333333 warmer
.33333333333 same
.33333333333 cooler
Then someone noticed when they rounded things off, they got:
.3 warmer
.3 same
.3 cooler
Which didn’t add up to 100%, so they rounded the last item up to get:
.3 warmer
.3 same
.4 cooler
In other words, the reason they got a higher chance of it being cold was simply due to rounding.
Don’t be too hard on the MET. NWS does exactly the same thing with their outlooks (ex: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/long_range/lead01/off01_temp.gif ) Totally useless in my opinion. It has actually been determined that these forecasts are as accurate as flipping a coin.
“4 in 10 chance of a cold start”
“4 in 10 chance of a dry start”
====================================================
6 in 10 chance of a warm start
6 in 10 chance of a wet start
So they really did miss it completely…………………….
……..and for $30 million
“3 in 10 chance of a mild start
3 in 10 chance of an average start
4 in 10 chance of a cold start”
… what we used to call a “two bob each way” bet.
But, but, the Met Office models are the very same models used in predicting climate (Julia Slingo told the UK parliament so). If this is a precision of a forecast for a few weeks in the future – how can multi-decade predictions be made?
Excellent. I hope to see that word used in headlines of future stories about the Met.
I love technology and news about advances like this. Just think, in 20 years our cell phones will have this kind of power (or whatever!).
What concerns me is that with this kind of computing mega-power behind it, there will be an overwhelming tendency of the alarmist media and advocates to argue that the MET analysis of its data must be believed (even if the data is wrong).
At least, there’s a 9 in 10 chance that they will argue that way.
But in reality, they will now be able to have “garbage in … garbage out” with incredible speed and in unbelievable quantities.
The question is, what was the source of the information that led Roger Harrabin of the BBC to report that the MET Office had in fact given that secret report to the government that January was going to be very cold?
What would be very powerful right here and now would be a actual observed and after-the-fact result of the Nov/Dec/Jan map above, as individual months or a merged, avg. version. Comparisons are always great fun.
Then you could really see what you get for 30Million quid.
Too bad we can’t see what the old computer spit out too, so we could see how those 1000 homes could have better used the energy.
The MET office should turn the conputer (not a typo) off and go home, as for the weather, well we could always ask Piers or just go to sleep and see what the morning brings. It cannot be any worse than this dismal performance.
Profound stuff!!!
“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.”
I find it absolutely unbelievable that anyone who has completed elementary school could possibly write the two “Summary” sentences quoted above.
In all of my business experience, which is more than I like to admit, if I were to have received a report with this type of BS, it would have been the last report, and probably the last paycheck this person would have received from me.
“A COLD AN WINTRY START TO THE WINTER SEASON”
“THERE ARE SOME INDICATIONS OF AN INCREASED RISK OF A MILD END TO THE WINTER SEASON”
No $h-t Red Ryder!
Way to go out on the limb with your forecasts. Very risky indeed. And you need a $30 million computer for this.
Is it just me, or does it seem like someone should be thrown in jail for a lifetime for trying to dupe the world??
Guess that computer it’s a kind of sophisticated British humor.
Dear Met Office,
Please be good sports and donate your supercomputer’s time to folding@home. You might actually help find the cure for Alzheimer’s, cancer and quite a few other diseases.
At the least, your results will be verifiable and unlike present results, may be of great benefit to mankind
R. Gates says:
January 21, 2011 at 11:08 am
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.
That’s all fine and dandy . . . but even they got it wrong . . . because it is “four too”!
The first three are Ones like:
the law of identity (A=A),
the law of non-contradiction (A does not equal ~A),
and the law of the excluded middle (either A or not A but not both A and ~A).
http://www.the-philosopher.co.uk/lawsofthought.htm
. . . and the fourth . . . which belongs to Ayn Rand
If there is a contradiction, check your premises!
I love logic . . . . even better rational reasoning . . . too bad they don’t teach that in school anymore . . . .
If that is the forecast sent to Government, it certainly gets the Government off the hook. It is hard to forcefully argue that the Government Minister negligently failed to act on a severe weather warning, nor that the various transport authorities failed to ready themselves for all that white stuff that the Met Office were predicting. That forecast hardly rings alarm bells, does it!
What an embarassment. Even a junior school child would be embarassed by that sort of forecast. Enirely useless.
With forecasts like that, this department could be scrapped and would not be missed.
Jim G says:
January 21, 2011 at 11:26 am
. I just love what I assume to be British terms such as “knackered”. Is that like snookered? Don’t believe I have heard that one before.
=========================================================
For the sake of distributing the vernacular worldwide:
From Wikipedia
“A knacker is a person in the trade of rendering animals that are unfit for human consumption, such as horses that can no longer work.[1] This leads to the slang expression “knackered” meaning very tired, or “ready for the knacker’s yard”, where old horses are slaughtered and made into dog food and glue. A knacker’s yard or knackery is different from a slaughterhouse, where animals are slaughtered for human consumption.
“Knackered” meaning tired, exhausted or broken in British and Irish slang is commonly used in Ireland and the United Kingdom. “Knackers” is also British/Australasian slang for testicles [3].”
In Australia it also tends to mean the latter being so tired that one feels as though one has lost his knackers.
As in the “UK Met computer is basically knackered.”
Cheers