From the organization that can’t forecast its way out of a paper bag, and then can’t bring itself to tell the public about long range forecasts anymore, it has come to this. OK, I’m not against citizen science, but when you start asking the “Chemtrail” watchers to do “science” to help check your models, there’s no hope for you. They apparently have no idea what they are getting themselves into asking for contrail watching. If they thought they were going to catch flak for long range forecast issues, just wait until the Chemtrail people start in on them.
Check out these statements:
Researchers are also urging schoolchildren to blow bubbles to measure wind speed and direction near the ground, to reveal how the built environment affects the wind, as well as watching cloud movement to record wind direction in the sky.
The Open Air Laboratories (Opal) survey also involves the public recording how hot or cold they feel as part of efforts to see how people might cope with temperature changes.
…
Scientists are also keen to discover what confuses people about climate change so that they can widen public understanding of the topic.
Dr Geoff Jenkins of the Met Office said: “We’re asking people to get outside observing and measuring the weather.
“What they see and record will be useful for checking the systems we use for forecasting weather and predicting climate.”
How hot or cold they feel? Sure that will reduce the “uncertainty” The only thing missing is tea leaves or tarot card readers.
Barking mad they are. Either that or this is simply a propaganda tool to engage children in the idea that they can do something supposedly useful to “change the climate”.
Full story here
Details on the project here: http://www.opalexplorenature.org/climatesurvey
The contrail submission page is here It’s a hoot.
My son keeps getting upset because the bubbles keep bursting before he can measure the speed they’re travelling, and when they don’t burst, he doesn’t know how to measure the speed. I’ve tried to explain to him how easy it is to do it, but he still doesn’t get it, which I suppose is understandable, after all he is only 19.
The only thing missing is tea leaves or tarot card readers.
David says:
March 4, 2011 at 9:03 am
I much prefer the Weather Stone, . . .
I have one of those. It works great. However, it does not forecast.
You need one of these, also:
http://www.new-potato.com/wstick/Science/science.html
The Search for the Why and How of Weather-sticks.
In the lee of the Cascade Mountains these sometimes seem to fail. I’m studying the science and trying to work out an adjustment. Please have your children go out and observe sticks and send comments to the MET Office. Use the links in the posted article.
Do you have a question about climate change?
Perhaps there’e something you don’t understand, or would like to know more about. Who better to ask than the climate experts at the Met Office ?
http://www.opalexplorenature.org/ClimateQuestions
(Their spelling!)
I’m a public confused….I’m supposed to watch the weather to help me understand climate?
On the up side, we now know that the overpaid scientists at the MET can be replaced by a bunch of 7yr olds with Mr. Bubble and a crayon.
“Daddy, daddy!!! I saw a contrail!! It was from a 2 engined jet flying at 24,500ft AGL, doing 400knots. I’ll give you the specifics on RH, windspeed, temperature, and all the other factors just as soon as I finish my 3rd grade report on butterflies!”
Metoffice? – they’re as Mad as a box of frogs, the lot of ’em!
You all may be missing an important point…
Children blowing bubbles and watching clouds may actually be an IMPROVEMENT over MET’s current methods of gathering data. 🙂
Of course, all of this data will likely be protected by privacy agreements with the children, so don’t expect to be able to download it without a legal battle. The legally binding agreements protecting all data and methods will be written in crayon.
Hmm, speaking of methods – I wonder if the bubble-liquid recipe will affect test results? I may have to go out into my backyard and test that… LOL
Ha, ha, ha, priceless, ha, ha
Weather stone.
Based on the Met’s recent behavior, maybe they are Chemtrail people already.
Ah ha, I’ve it!
Get the kids to invent solar powered soap bubble blowers. Gold stars all ’round I’m sure …
Then solar powered soap bubble vehicles, homes and etc., the sky’s the limit!
Hear Ye, hear ye massive amount of soap bubbles released into atmosphere is very good for our planet, good for the children, cleans both CON and CHEM trails whilst restoring the ozone! Hear ye, hear ye.
( heh anything goes with the MET office so they should buy this as well – and where can I get those lucrative grant applications again? 😉 )
@Evan Jones, nicely done! … and the money being stolen from the public for the very fact that our weather/climate changes. Like to say that this will go down as the biggest con job of all human history, but I’m sure they’ll be more as people are not good at learning from their own history, as a whole, to me.
I a waiting for golfers to start using the bubble approach. Much more accurate than tossing a pinch of grass. But then, I could never figure out how knowing the wind a foot or two in front of your face could determine what happens a ball over 200 yards away falling from over 100 feet in the air. However, it does look good and portrays yourself as “knowledgeable” so I always do it.
I wonder if they would consider giving me a job analysing the drifting bubbles? I’d come complete with my own two year old great grandson to do the blowing. I don’t think that he is quite ready to calculate wind speed just yet. As to how hot or cold I feel, I should be pretty good at that having had a fair measure of practice over the years. I see a whole new future opening up.
How on earth are they going to co-ordinate the data? Suppose I am standing in my garden and a jumbo flies overhead on its way to Heathrow and I note down the contrail (+date and time), then Fred 10 miles up the road spots the contrail a couple of minutes later and notes it (+date and time), and so on all the way from Lands End to Heathrow, will the Met Office have the nouse to know that this is just one ‘plane, or will they deduce that there have been, say, 25 contrails?
Why don’t they just ask the airports for their flight info?
Am I just being thick?
Will the Met Office pay for my physio to sort out the crick in my neck from all this contrail watching?
I think the bubble-blowing will be us all foaming at the mouth as we go quietly insane.
As school children already know how to measure wind speed:
http://www.ciese.org/curriculum/weatherproj2/en/docs/anemometer.shtml
the MetO now stand to loose their junior audience too.
I think they are asking the wrong segment of the public. If they had any brains they would restrict their “aquisition” of “climate data” to women in the 45-70 year old age group. As that population segment experiences frequent “personal summers”, they should be a far more reliable temperature proxy than even siberian larches.
My own wife says she feels frequently far hotter in the last 2 years than in the 30 years average before, thus experiencing her own “Hockey Stick”. However, she is too smart to think that it is a global phenomenon.
“involves the public recording how hot or cold they feel as part of efforts to see how people might cope with temperature change.
Scientists are also keen to discover what confuses people about climate change so that they can widen public understanding of the topic.”
We could start with the met office’s confusion about the fact that how hot and cold people feel has nothing to do with global temperature changes.
Blow bubbles for climate change. Hop on the left leg for climate change. Wear a ribbon for climate change. Wear a green shirt for climate change. Etc.
I suspect that the Met Office’s suggestion of blowing bubbles in the wind is a nicer way of pointing out to young children that they might as well p**s in the wind as use their weather forecasts.
Only older children are capable of studying the contrails left by climate scientists in the CRU emails. -I wonder if the metoffice will issue any teacher guidance on how to do this?
“The Open Air Laboratories (Opal) survey also involves the public recording how hot or cold they feel as part of efforts to see how people might cope with temperature changes.”
Being here in Minnesota, I’m well out of the Met’s balliwick and I’m not sure if they’re interested in my input, but given the chaos that ensued over there from what I and most Minnesotans would consider fairly modest weather events, I think they could use my help. From the AccuWeather archives I found the range of local temps for Dec, Jan,and Feb. They are respectively 46 to -17, 30 to -19, and 50 to -14. All temps are in Farenheit. We don’t do Centigrade here because we have a certain pride of place and tend to find it irritating when folks minge on about “below zero” temps when it’s barely cold enough outside to put a skin of ice on the puddles in the street.
I think I can safely report that through most of the last three months most everyone here felt cold, although on that day in Feb when it was 50F with a bluebird sky many of the young local lovelies were out and about in shorts and tank tops. Providing that annual inspirational moment that folks in places like San Diego and LA, who have to deal with SYTs floosing about in bikinis virtually year around, will never be able to appreciate. That moment each year when womankind, after months of trundling about cocooned in parkas and sweatpants, suddenly emerge like butterflies in an explosion of alabaster feminine flesh has never failed to provide a thrill and I hope it never will.
But I digress. Though the temps I quoted may seem extreme to those who inhabit more benevolent climes, they actually represent a fairly mild winter, though the excursions above normal were briefer and less frequent than usual and the overall average was well below normal, it has been all in all a rather typical season.
The point of this now long winded wheeze relates to the Met’s supposed interest in how people will “cope” with temperature change. For thousands of years human populations have occupied places on the planet far more extreme than where I live. From the subArctic to Saharan deserts there have been relative few environments on the planet where humans have not attempted to make a home. Warmer Temperature has almost never been the determining factor in whether they succeeded or not. Advancing ice and persistent droughts over decades have lead to societal breakdown and abandonment of locales by human groups in the past, but even in those cases not all the humans left.
I think a more productive use of your time can be made if you forego worrying about the coping capacity of humanity, which is more than adequate, and try to focus on your real job i. e. attempting to provide weather forecasts that people can actually have a little faith in.
[Snip. You know why. ~dbs, mod.]
HFC @ur momisugly 8.52 am
Fellow brit here. I hope you responded by saying “Wrong Answer! Remember who is the public servant here! Yes – You, Mr Huhne! You do what we tell you, not the other way round, and if this questionable (to say the least) policy is not reversed, guess who will be joining the dole queue. And as for the despicable Mr Holliday (see Willis’ latest), there are any number of punishments I would be willing to impose.”
We need to turn this around, and make these career politicians afraid. Very afraid!
On both sides of the pond!
M
Planespotting! Gotta love it. UK climate science at its finest.
Pure marketing genius at work, I tell ya. Contrails/entrails/chemtrails…reminiscent of “parts is parts”.
Grab the popcorn, folks, because Humpty Dumpty is going to try to jump the Grand Canyon on a moped.
SandyInDerby, thanks for the link to the online emission reduction game. I reached the goal mainly by ramping up nuclear power to one notch below max and switching to 80% electric vehicles (hey, it’s the UK, every destination is one battery charge away, right?). No onshore wind turbines at all!
Muahahahaha!