After the revelation: The Met office and the BBC- caught cold that the Met office had issued a forecast to the UK Cabinet office, and that forecast didn’t contain much of anything useful, the least of which was any solid prediction of a harsh winter, I offered BBC’s environmental reporter Roger Harrabin a chance to respond, to tell his side of the story. At first I didn’t think he would, because his initial response was kind and courteous, but not encouraging. I was surprised today to find this essay in my Inbox, which is repeated verbatim below, with the only editing being to fix some HTML formatting in the links he provides at the end. In his essay, he’s proposing a “weather test” of the Met Office, and Piers Corbyn has agreed to be tested as well. – Anthony
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From Roger Harrabin BBC Environment Analyst
The latest who-said-what-when saga over the Met Office winter forecast has created a stir of interest and understandable concern.
I offer some thoughts of my own on the matter in my BBC Online column. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12325695
But the row only serves to emphasize the need for better information on the performance of weather forecasters over the long term.
That’s why I am attempting with the help of the Royal Met Soc, the Royal Stats Soc and the Royal Astro Soc to devise a Weather Test in which forecasters enter their forecasts to a central data point, so they can be judged against each other over a period of time.
We’d like to compile records of daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal forecasts. The UK independent Piers Corbyn is the only person to have volunteered so far to be tested in all these categories, though we will be in discussions with others to persuade them to take part.
We, the public, need to know which forecasters and which forecasting methods we should trust for different types of forecasting.
We are progressing with a protocol which will ensure that all participants submit data in the same form. Hopefully we’ll be able to launch the project fairly soon, although it is proving time-consuming.
Before we settle the final protocol we’ll publish it on the web to gather comments from citizen scientists. When it is finally agreed by the steering group it’ll be handed to Leeds University to run the project, with no further involvement in the data from the steering committee members.
In the meantime I’m hoping to avoid further controversies like the Met Office winter forecasts. I have been accused in the blogosphere of having so many different motives that I can’t keep track of them all.
My real motive is to try to do a decent job telling people about things that are important and they probably didn’t already know. For instance I first led media coverage about the value of the Met Office seasonal forecast a number of years ago. (My other motive – for those of you who keep emailing me at weekends – is to have a life with my wife, kids and friends.)
I do need to scotch one particularly bizarre bit of blogbabble, though. Some bloggers depict me as a puppet for the BBC’s pension fund trustees trying to boost their investments in green technology.
This is definitely going in my book – it is the most entertaining and baroque allegation I’ve ever faced. The truth is that BBC bosses issue very few diktats and most programme editors are stubbornly independent. I offered the recent Met Office stories from my own contacts and knowledge. No-one else asked me to do them. I don’t even know the pension fund trustees.
There are some very clever and inventive people out there in the blogosphere. Some are laudably engaged in a pursuit of facts about climate change and weather. Others might serve more use by trying to locate Elvis.
If you want to measure my journalism, you could take a look or listen to some of the articles or radio docs below. And make up your own mind.
Uncertain Climate docs 1 & 2:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tj525
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tmcz3
Copenhagen doc http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w6pp4
Articles on Royal Society, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10178454
Met Office, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8462890.stm
Lord Oxburgh, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10507144
And Al Gore, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7040370.stm
Darkinbad the Brightdayler says:
February 1, 2011 at 11:15 am
“I’m surprised at the pettiness of some of the comments. Sniping in such a way at one of the few prepared to put his head above the parapet and address the criticisms says stuff about the poster that I’d rather not know about or want to share space with.”
La de da. Harrabin has emphatically not addressed the criticisms. And it’s called comeuppance, justly deserved too.
Re Izen Various
I note that you have not responded to my points regarding warmest year/warmest decade – in a background of long term “warming”.
I am not a scientist so I cannot debate with you as to the reasons why the planet has warmed and cooled and warmed over 1000s of years – but I do know it has! I also know that AGW cannot have been a factor for the vast majority of that time.
Therefore, the variations in temperature over this time are “natural” – natural in the sense that it is nature “what did it” – in the form of all elements from the sun, through to volcanoes, La ninas, meteorite stikes or whatever.
The point being, no matter how clever we humans think we are these elements have contributed to planet’s climate changing over millions of years – and we cannot influence these “natural” causes (Canute and all that).
I am calling it “natural variation” in a lay sense – where “Nature”, with all of its beauty and ferocity, is the cause of any change rather than “man”.
Based upon the CET graph of the UK, there is no evidence, as far as I can see, of anything other than long term, gradual warming. The “warmist” alarmism was predicated on the basis of the most recent increase in average temperatures between around 1985 and 2000 (from the graph). This, we were told, was exceptional and unprecedented warming that must be being caused by man.
The warming wasn’t exceptional and unprecedented – the graph clearly shows it wasn’t. Unhelpfully, the graph has also turned down just as steeply as it rose. However, no one is suggesting that this trend will continue towards an ice age (yet?).
Ultimately, man will be affected positively and negatively by changes in the planet’s climate caused by entirely natural events over which we have no control.
If there are countries or communities that we believe will suffer as a result of these changes then we should invest to help them adapt to the changes – rather than pretend we can save them by riding a bicycle instead of driving a car.
If, for instance, we believe that the Maldive Islands are going to be inundated by rising sea levels (which, I believe, have been rising for hundreds of years) then we need to help by either protecting the islands with better sea defences (not very beautiful or practical in the long term) or – move the islanders to a new, safer location.
Unfortunately, current policy is to pursue a third alternative where learned people attend huge conferences and wring their hands at the plight of such people – and then bring in laws, for instance, to make us use new, more efficient light bulbs! (As a complete aside, wasn’t the major benefit of the light bulb to provide “instant light? A quality that is singularly missing from the light bulbs now being sold in the UK!).
If I was a Maldivian (that may be a word that I have just made up), I would be hugely relieved to know that”The West” was so concerned about the danger to me and my family that they were prepared to install double glazing, drive a Prius and turn their central heating by a degee. (Sarcastic comment again!)