I’ve been given a link in email today to a public forecast page for July by weather prognosticator Piers Corbyn, which you can investigate in full yourself here. I find his web pages and forecasts hard to read, and even harder to accept any more, because in my opinion, he presents them like a carnival barker with overuse of exclamation points, bright colors, over bolded texts, random font changes, and fantastic claims. It tends to set off my BS meter like some tabloid newspapers do. Here’s his USA forecast for July:
[UPDATE: 7/8/12 – The full USA forecast has been made available by Mr. Corbyn and is available here for your inspection: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/usa-1207-july-inc-public-summary-news-page-full-fc-key-usa-maps-and-extremes-slat8a-prod-29jun.pdf ]
Some people say however, that despite all that unnecessary gaudiness, he makes accurate predictions. Because he’s made a public forecast and advertised its availability, urging “people to pass the links on”, here’s a chance to find out if he demonstrates the skill that is claimed.
He made this bold claim yesterday:
“Terrible weather is coming the world over this July so WeatherAction has issued free summary long range forecasts for USA and for Europe…”
He sounds like Joe Romm or Bill McKibben talking about “climate disruption”. Of course, it could just be another July in the northern hemisphere. Here’s the rest:
The USA pdf link is issued today on July 4th to go with the Europe link issued the day before. We urge people to pass the links on.
“We also expect very serious near simultaneous solar-activity driven deluges and stormy conditions around the world during our top Red Warning R5 and R4 periods. Any communication of the forecasts must acknowledge WeatherAction”
– Piers Corbyn, astrophysicist WeatherAction long range weather and climate forecasters
WeatherAction Free Summary Forecast for July USA:-
“Could it get worse? Yes!” – Extreme thunderstorms, giant hail and ‘out-of control’ forest fires’
pdf link = http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews12No32.pdf
(or no links twitpic = http://twitpic.com/a3y28b/full )
WeatherAction PUBLIC warning Europe July 2012 “Off-the-scale” Flood & Fire extremes likely (WA12No31)
pdf link = http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews12No31.pdf
(or no links twitpic = http://twitpic.com/a3p7pm/full )
The USA forecast map he provides is a bit hard to read, since it seems he scanned it in from print…note the dot patterns in the graphics. I present it here from his PDF page.
Here’s his forecast page for Europe:
He lists “off scale” weather in NW Europe is one of the claims. I wonder how one should define “off scale” weather.
As Carl Sagan once said:
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
So now that Mr. Corbyn has put forth some extraordinary claims, we can catalog here the evidence to support those claims, and revisit the results at the end of the month. I urge readers to continue to post both pro and con evidence here as the month progresses. I’ll put a link to this thread in the WUWT sidebar so readers can add information that might be relevant.
Since Corbyn is a fellow climate skeptic, let’s give him a fair but factual evaluation to find out if these claims hold up, of if he’s simply following the path of some prognosticators of the past, such as Jeane Dixon, who made claims so broad that even a small kernel of happenstance occurrences after the fact were used to justify confirmation of the prediction. According to the Wikipedia page on Dixon:
John Allen Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University, coined the term “the Jeane Dixon effect,” which refers to a tendency to promote a few correct predictions while ignoring a larger number of incorrect predictions.
I don’t know that is what is going on here with Corbyn or not, but since he’s put out an open 
forecast, let’s find out. Inquiring minds want to know.
UPDATE: here’s a video of Corbyn explaining his methods:
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Willis, I have corrected the the counts for month length and it hasnt made any noticable difference.
Here is a plot of the period spectrum, I obtained:
http://tinypic.com/r/51pwlv/6
OK, again being totally unprofessional – so not sure whether you guys even read my comments – but even I have been able to link predictions having gone wrong (be they by Piers or any other climatologist) to the times when the sun kicks into overdrive activity wise. For example, in September and October many more weather people besides Piers were predicting that we would have a horribly cold November/December. Until the sun blew out a few good ones around November 27th (if I remember correctly). We even saw polar light displays in our neck of the woods (being the northern part of The Netherlands). To me this whole discussion is starting to sound like a joke I once heard: “The water is cold!” “Yeah, and deep, too.” Is that what this is about? Sure, if your BBQ gets rained on you’re mad because the prediction was for the weather to be good. Which leaves me to wonder if people these days are still able to read certain signs themselves, like swallows flying low due to increased low pressure (you know, bugs, etc) or cattle starting to group together, or certain flowers closing during the day. But what really has me stymied is the mention of “predictions based on past weather”. Past weather?? What use would THAT be?! Farmers here are all talking about the fact that the weather has NOT been the same for more than three years running! Crops coming up much later than usual, the wind remaining easterly for much longer than normal (resulting in soil drying out), and the pattern of these past few years of one short, warm period early in spring, followed by long extended periods of rain, rain, rain. If everybody in both the camps of Getting Warmer and Getting Colder agrees on the one fact that the climate is changing, where does past weather come into this all? A good test – if that is all you folks care about, instead of understanding this changing weather pattern – would be to venture a guess at what this coming winter will be like. And I mean predicting whether there will be long, extended periods of frost, turning the soil rock hard, so tilling it won’t be possible until somewhere in March or thereabouts; or predicting short cold spells with intermittent periods of rain or milder temperatures, so tilling can start at the end of January. See? That;s what counts these days. Whether farmers will be able to produce large crops or whether food prices will soar even further because both seeding and harvesting is late. Again. And of course the sun’s influence needs to be taken into account. Like I said before, if that big golden globe in the sky decides to interfere, all bets are off. Anyone who then starts needling “the other guy” for being wrong really doesn’t understand how things work. Seems that, ever since computers came into being, man’s own ability to reason and understand the world around him has been thrown out the window. Shame, really.
So if on Wednesday the Met Office says the weekend will be gorgeous, and you plan your barbecue, and it is fine on Thursday and Friday but it rains heavily all weekend with giant hail and tornado swarms, that’s a success because that type of weather event occurred close to the period … I’ll keep that in mind next time you start telling me that the Met Office is a failure.
No that’s a failure because the prediction was made close to the event. If the Met Office (or anyone else) said they expect severe storms 1 month down the line on that specific weekend, but it misses by a few days, I would count that as a success, albeit not as successful as if it had actually hit on the exact dates specified.
If they predict a bit of rain 1 month in advance of the period in question, I would think ‘big deal’ – rainy days happen, and if they got it exactly right, I would still think ‘big deal’ they got lucky. If they get that right all the time then I’d be impressed but not overwhelmed – I can at least plan my BBQs 1 month in advance. What you keep missing is the very specific characteristic of the weather – namely a severe weather event – something out of the ordinary. If someone is picking that 1 month or more in advance I think that’s pretty impressive.
Here’s an example. Suppose it rains one day out of three on average. Suppose further that I always forecast clear bright sunny days.
I am aware of this, but the problem you are missing is we are not talking about ‘ordinary’ weather. Not a binary rainy or sunny day, but specific features; extreme cold, extreme heat, extreme wind, snow, hail, very heavy and prolonged rain, etc etc. Take a mark off for not getting ‘tronado swarms’ and another for the weather turning up late, but give him some marks for picking the right kind of weather event so far in advance.
The question is not whether they are useful but whether they are correct, and how often.
Well for goodness sake, if he is getting them correct then they are useful. If they are not correct then how can they be useful? But by correct, all I am saying is that it is not binary – right or wrong. If he detects an extreme weather event well in advance – outside of the norm some credit needs to go toward that – it is still useful, just not as ‘useful’ if the weather had obligingly turned up right on time. So the unusualness of the weather counts toward success of the prediction. How often he gets it right or ‘right enough’ to have credit IS as you say the big question.
But if he doesn’t allow a greater range of error, if he specifies it to within three days, then that’s what I’ll judge him on.
I still think you are too worried about ‘judging’ him. HE is the author of a methodology and frankly Piers, as a scientific dispassionate character, does not fill me with enormous confidence. And I mean no offence to him – he’s an eccentric. It’s the methodology I’m intrigued by. So I really don’t think you should give a damn about what Piers says but look at whether or not the forecasts are sufficiently correctly characterised, whether they are sufficiently accurate in location and time, whilst weighing up the unusualness of the event or weather against the time in advance the prediction was made. Make your own mind up about how accurate or not the forecast is given those variables, but it could never be a completely binary decision. Obviously, if he predicts a massive storm at a given period of time, and nothing turns up anywhere close to the period – that’s fail. Even if the exact period is a bit rainy – that does not constitute a storm. But if he predicts a massive storm, for a certain period and falls just outside of that, then SLAT seems to be detecting something more than the normal weather variability – and that’s what I am interested in.
This is science, Agnostic. The concept of science might be easier for you if you think of it as a bet.
Precisely what I have been encouraging you to think long range forecasting as!
My question was whether you would consider the Met Office forecast a failure.
Yes a failure. It wasn’t an unusual weather event and the forecast was only a few days ahead. That’s a fail.
Agnostic, perhaps you think the Mayor of London is some holy referee to settle the question
No mate, I was merely trying to point out it was prediction occurred and at the same time pointing out the other societal consequences of being able to get long range forecasting to a useful level – I was killing as many birds with one stone as I could. I could link you to the Richard Black article if you would prefer.
While the science is certainly imprecise, the outcomes are not—either the weekend is sunny, or it rains. That’s the part you seem to be missing.
No – the part YOU are missing is I am talking about unusual low probability events picked well in advance and well in advance of standard meteorology. Hopefully I have made that clear now?
But wait, you said if the event occurred close to when he predicted it, it was a success. If he predicts “cold December, warm January” and the reverse happens, by your terms both forecasts should be counted as a success. Now, you say they are a failure … please make up your mind.
No – Willis please – try to at least to see what I am saying. If you are wondering why I would need to make up your mind maybe you are missing the point. Piers – apparently – correctly predicted, well in advance, the cold snap and the following mild weather, but then predicted that the weather would return to being very cold and possibly snowy. He got the timings of the cold snap, and the mild weather right, but it stayed mild rather than returned to being cold. What do you make of that? Right or wrong? So he predicted accurately unusually cold conditions and the timing of it changing warm. Stop right there, and he was right. But then he said it would turn cold again, which it didn’t – so was he wrong?
Oh, enough with the insults, it makes you look spiteful.
My apologies – I was dinkum, but re-reading it it does sound goading. I just got the impression that this area might have been too ‘woolly’ for your taste – that’s all.
I’m sorry, but that is not science, that way lies madness. If he meant Arizona, he should have said so. If he meant the last week of May, he should have said so. The only way to objectively analyze his forecasts is to see if they were right or wrong under his specified terms of the forecast, not to see if something similar happened in Phoenix in May.
This is the precise area where I disagree. But I think I have understood why. You are simply examining what Piers claims, you are not examining whether the SLAT method can detect something useful. That is why I think you are missing the point.
Last year in Australia there were severe floods in various areas in the eastern states. I remember reading that Piers had predicted a specific flood event for Queensland. He got the timing right to within a few days, and the type of event, but he was out geographically. He was expecting the floods to hit Queensland, primarily, but they hit further to the South in Southern Queensland and Northern NSW. At the time I was impressed about the timing, and felt that the event was sufficiently close for it to be counted as a success in terms of detecting that the event would occur. But it was further south than expected. From the point of view of society, knowing well in advance that floods are imminent, is really important. Knowing that there is going be a whole pile of snow on the way is really important.
Even with the inaccuracy, if people had known such an event was coming they could do more to prepare. If SLAT was mainstream perhaps it could be developed further so that inaccuracies could be improved. What I want to know is if there really is anything to the methodology. If the physical basis behind the method is proven, then it would be extremely interesting in the context of the climate change debate.
In your position as a noted auditor, I have no doubt that your polite request for past predictions that you can check against the records will be met enthusiastically – eventually. He has been audited before so I don’t see why he wouldn’t again.
Man Bearpig says:
July 12, 2012 at 11:26 am
That’s it? No investigation as to whether the “independent study” is valid? You definitely need to jack up your skepticism level, MBP.
Me, I’m not that foolish as to believe some random “study”. So I took a look to see what was happening. I picked a forecast at random, I looked at his forecast for typhoons in July:
Now, that’s a total of seven typhoons forecast in the Western North Pacific by Piers, some of which are supposed to make landfall in China, Japan, Phillipines, or Taiwan, plus two more listed as likely … and out of those, six (plus one) typhoons are listed as “YES”, meaning that they actually occurred. All of those findings were “verified” by WeatherNews.
Now that’s pretty impressive, part of what Piers claims is a stunning rate of success.
It gave the reference to verify the claims as being here. So I looked there to see about the typhoons.
Care to guess how many typhoons there were in that region, according to the listed reference? Remember that Piers has claimed success on predictions of six typhoons (plus one more likely typhoon), and has said he missed on only one prediction (plus one more listed as likely) … so how many typhoons do you think actually occurred in the region according to their citation?
…
Two … look it up. Two typhoons occurred in the area in July, and he is claiming success for forecasting six (plus one).
This is a recurring problem that I find with Piers’ claims … when I examine them, they simply don’t hold up. Truly, folks, you can’t just blindly trust anyone’s claims. Go to the sources and check for yourselves.
w.
The reference given is misleading in that it lists STS’s as typhoons. If you look at the typhoon timeline for 2008 it is much easier to see what went on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2008_Pacific_typhoon_season
Amazing how Piers managed to create so many typhoons out of just two!
Willis.. “You have never replied to my question about whether you count a Met Office forecast for a sunny clear weekend as a success if the weekend is rainy and stormy, but Monday and Tuesday are clear.”
Irrelevant as the Met don’t make detailed forecasts 4 weeks ahead Piers does.
W’.. “A forecast is a forecast, made for a specific place and time.”
And if that forecast is not a guaranteed forecast but is given parameters and a confidence level, then you would stick to that description would you Willis?
“A forecast is a forecast” is untrue. All forecasts are different, and come from dozens of different meteorologists all using the same sets of data, and all coming to different conclusions as to what type of weather is most likely to occur.
W’.. “And predicting “thunder and hail” in the Midwest in the summer??? That happens almost every single day, that’s like predicting that water will be wet.
This disagrees with your statement. Precipitation across the board at around 10 days per month.
http://www.climate-zone.com/climate/united-states/indiana/fort-wayne/
http://www.climate-zone.com/climate/united-states/illinois/chicago/
http://www.climate-zone.com/climate/united-states/ohio/cleveland/
But you also said;
W’.. “I looked for extreme thunderstorms in the predicted area during the predicted time. I found none. I looked for “giant hail” in the predicted area during the predicted time. I found none.”
Now you are specifying stipulative definitions again. By using the word ‘extreme’ in looking up reports of thunder or hail or storms, how likely is it that an American reporter is going to use the word ‘extreme’ or ‘giant’?
How likely is it that they would use the term ‘giant’ hail?
You are searching for something which, by definition, you are not going to find.
I think the correct English term would be, barking up the wrong tree’!
I think Piers is going to learn a lot from this test, and one thing he must take on board is that the terminology he uses must fit with the terminology used in the nation to which his forecasts apply.
American reporters use the word large when reporting hail larger than a ‘quarter’ generally which is about the size of a UK 10p.
In the UK we rarely see hail that large, so I would think of large hail as being bigger than a blueberry, because that’s about the largest I’ve ever seen. So ‘large/giant hail’ has different definitions in different parts of the world.
You are using the term as if it were a universal constant which it is not.
W’.. “I agree. The further back in time Piers is forecasting, the greater the range of error that PIERS has to allow. But if he doesn’t allow a greater range of error, if he specifies it to within three days, then that’s what I’ll judge him on.”
His margin of error does have an extention to the number of specified days. That’s where Piers 65% – 85% confidence level comes into play. He first specifies the most likely days, then gives a confidence level. An 85% confidence level tells you to expect the hit to be pretty much on one of those days. A lesser 65% level clearly widens those parameters to ‘at least’ +/- 1 day. So if he predicts an extreme event like a big thunderstorm on 2nd to 4th but with 65% confidence 4 weeks ahead, then the 65% would cause me to immediately widen the hit zone to +/- 1 day making it 1st to 3rd and 3rd to 5th at the outside. I would still be confident that the big storm would hit but unsure of the precise day. I would then watch the nations rain radar to see when and where the storm was developing and where it was likely to track.
This I would call less accurate not wrong, because he stipulated the accuracy as a confidence rating. It would only be wrong if the storm didn’t occur.
Piers doesn’t have the mountain of expensive kit and caboodle that the Met have at their disposal so cannot give more accurate detail, even nearer the event.
I agree his forecast was slightly innacurate in it’s details at the beginning of July, because there were no tornados to speak of, or tornado swarms or floods. He predicted giant hail, and the terminology, although it may be open to question is not wrong!
Maybe he should have simply stated, “nail down everything, there’s a storm coming!” and left it at that?
Personally I don’t care how he describes the hail, beit large, giant, big, huge, scary, dime sized, damaging, painful, I know big hail is a high probability so keep the car under cover.
My father used to refer to large snowflakes as resembling dinner plates. I didn’t expect to stick my head out of the window and see flakes a foot across wafting around. He wasn’t wrong, he was just exaggerating.
I stick to my original claim that he got most of the forecast correct apart from the tornados and floods. The storm began building like any big thunderstorm but then developed into a Derecho, which is virtually impossible to predict, even short range, which nobody did by the way.
He predicted thunder and hail on the 29th to 1st (public bulletin) which are always associated with storms and one of the worst storms in NE American history occurred on the 29th with thunder and hail. Nobody knows how bad one of these storms is going to be, or whether it will turn into a Derecho, but nobody else forecast that storm two weeks ahead either. Not even the local meteorologists would stick their neck out and predict large/giant hail, because they know that it can occur just about anywhere without a moments notice, and can hit one side of town yet not the other. If you asked them to predict large/giant hail on the 29th two weeks ahead they would just laugh at you.
And you are debating the use of the word giant? Sheeesh!
W’.. “Piers is setting the boundaries on his forecasts, and I take him at his word about those boundaries.”
But you aren’t! You are taking only part of his description and leaving other parts out. You hang on to the word giant as if it might get you a lottery win, then completely ignore the real parameters which are the confidence levels. These are the parts of Piers description which enable you to get a idea of the likelihood of an event occurring in a specific period. This cannot be ignored as it is an essential and intrinsic part of the forecast.
W’.. “so his forecast of floods in California in June is a resounding success because it flooded in Phoenix, Arizona in May.”
I see you have a good grasp of exaggeration Willis. So using your explanation above, if Piers predicted a blizzard in northern New Mexico on the 30th of September say two weeks ahead, but the blizzard actually missed this area and hit 50 miles to the north in Alamosa, Colorado at 2am on the 1st of October, then you would call that a failure would you? Only 2hrs out with the date and a mere 50 miles out in location. Yet these are the parameters you stated above and called them a failure, although I did notice that you picked Phoenix which lies in a more central position, and so makes your analogy a little more bullet proof.
I’ve not looked at typhoons yet because I live in the UK; no need. I will when I have the time.
regards
Russ
PS “fourier analysis” ahh you mean wavy graphs : ^ )
Martin Gordon.. “Amazing how Piers managed to create so many typhoons out of just two!”
Here we go again with the word games!
Dictionary definitions:
Typhoon_ A violent tropical storm
Typhoon_ A violent tropical storm or cyclone, especially in the China seas and W Pacific
Typhoon_ A tropical cyclone
Cyclone_ A violent tropical storm
I thought you lot at WUWT were above all this?
You are simply creating ficticious errors in the hope of bolstering your own argument.
I’m sorry Russ, you need more than your schoolyard definitions here! A Tropical Storm is not a Typhoon by any other name.
Modified Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale (SSHWS) for the Western North Pacific.
For Tropical Depression and Tropical Storm:
Category A Maximum sustained Wind (MSW): 30-49 mph (26-43 kt) and peak gusts 40-64
mph (33-56 kt)
Category B MSW: 50 – 73 mph (44-63 kt) and peak gusts 65-94 mph (57-81 kt)
For Typhoon:
ONE MSW: 74-95 mph (64-82 kt) and peak gusts 95-120 mph (82-105 kt)
TWO MSW: 96-110 mph (83-95 kt) and peak gusts 121-139 mph (106-121 kt)
THREE MSW: 111-129 mph (96-112 kt) and peak gusts 140-164 mph (122-142 kt)
FOUR MSW: 130-156 mph (113-136 kt) and peak gusts 165-198 mph (143-173 kt)
FIVE MSW: 157-194 mph (137-170 kt) and peak gusts 199-246 mph (174-216 kt)
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/directives/sym/pd01006004curr.pdf
More trickery from W
I saw this above:
“PS—Let me remind readers again that after Piers asked if anyone wanted to bet on rain for the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, I said I was interested and asked him what the odds and the terms of the bet were. Since then … just the sound of crickets.”
Now I have not seen this note until now let alone ‘again’ so all I can say you are being deceitful, W; and I note others have pointed out such tendencies in your ‘assessments’.
It reminds me of the newspaper trick. Denounce a politician, look for them in a way to not get hold of them and say they “were not available for comment”.
I have received no question on the matter and if I had received it I would have responded.
So W, I suggest you apologize for slur and innuendo.
As to what is going on her is the information. We were going to get odds of 4/1 against (ie put down $1 and we win $4 if it rains. At that point when they found I was involved, as I understand, they cut the odds to 1/1. My friend said we want longer odds and left it. If you want to bet at what we were expecting as reasonable before then fine. ie I place a notional 1$ and if it rains (I am not sure what they have defined as period and where but presumably that exists) you owe me $4. If its dry I would owe you $1.
As far as the loads of stuff up there I want to thank Russ and ManBearPig and many for comments. The word churlish comes to mind to describe a lot of the hostile comments as well as misrepresentation and malevolent. Note the extreme events accuracy reports on the WeatherAction site were independently assessed so I don’t quite follow all this argument about (mis)counting typhoons or Tropical storms. The report is the report and we are well ahead of luck. I suspect there is some mis-leading going on here (not by us) and maybe what was being assessed was formation of things which reached TD or TS level in the time periods said but not necessarily reaching typhoon or hurricane. The organisation that looked at this would have been very consistent with application of any rules (since they work for insurance companies) and I object very strongly to the slurs and innuendo directed against them and me.
Anthony was sent our full 2011 ATS seasonal forecast last year which impressed users. If you want to assess such that makes more sense anyway than older stuff since it is a more complete set of something and our technique advanced a lot for TS in 2011.
The first question needed for assessing along range forecast is did anything like that happen? Our forecast users say generally yes and yes again, including for USA now and recently, AND USE THE FORECASTS TO INCREASE THEIR BOTTOM LINE. Starting off by seeking out ‘wrong’ detail much of which we know WILL be wrong – we are doing ‘likely possible scenarios’ after all – is churlish and childish and says more about the ‘assessors’ than the forecasts.
Piers C
I’d ask for your money back from the assessors Piers – there is a 50mph+ difference between a TD and a Typhoon!
MG.. “schoolyard definitions” .
tut tut….actually they are dictionary definitions but maybe you missed that in your rush to dis me!
Well it’s back to school for you I’m afraid!
This is just one example but the web is a huge place and I’m sure you’ll find more if you spend at least 3 minutes searching.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon
I guess we are going to get hung up on wind speeds now are we?
Piers Corbyn (@Piers_Corbyn) says:
July 13, 2012 at 10:14 am
Piers, you offered to bet on July 6th, saying:
I responded, here in this same forum where you made the offer, on the following day, saying I was interested.
I repeated my offer on July 8th.
I repeated my offer again on July 9th.
Finally, I repeated it (as you quoted above) for the fourth time on July 12th.
That is four separate times I discussed it over a space of five days, openly and clearly. At no time did I accuse you of anything, I just noted that you had not responded.
So you can take your nasty, spiteful allegations that I am being “deceitful” and engaged in “trickery” and stuff them up your fundamental orifice. If you are not following the story, that’s your business, but it is a slimy, ugly move to accuse me of trickery just because you are not paying attention.
w.
Piers Corbyn (@Piers_Corbyn) says:
July 13, 2012 at 10:14 am
I don’t care if they were independently assessed by God herself, I’m skeptical of her results as well. You claimed success on predicting six (plus perhaps a seventh) typhoons in the central/western Pacific in July 2008. According to your own cited reference, there were only two typhoons in that area during that time.
If you can explain that, you’d better get on it ASAP, because right now it looks very much like neither you nor the independent assessors were able to count typhoons, and that your forecast of six typhoons, far from being verified, is totally wrong.
w.
Wait a minute, when did a tropical depression blow onto the stage?
Who mentioned depressions?
This is getting surreal. You are assessing a weather forecast here not proving Al Gore should stick to gardening!
I’m getting a real holier than thou feeling about this site which I didn’t realise existed. Not nice!
@Russ
Are we going to get hung up on wind speeds? Only if you want to be scientific and objective, but from what I’ve seen so far it seems thereabouts, nearly, and sort of, are the guidelines.
Thanks for the link, it just reaffirms what I posted above – a typhoon has distinct and measurable features that allows it to be differentiated from a TS and TD.
Willis.. “Since then … just the sound of crickets.”
That is rather rude. You make it sound like he’s running scared or hiding from you. This gets more like a schoolyard by the hour.
Piers is a very busy man, not having hundreds of staff to do his bidding, and it does sound as though he caught up reading this thread today. So maybe ‘you’ should be a little more patient before repeatedly asking Piers why he hasn’t responded? That’s the only reason I can see for his vociferous remark. Maybe if everyone was just a little more patient before telling people they have a schoolyard intellect, or they’re a scaredy-cat, we might just move forwards, don’t you think?
Russ says:
July 13, 2012 at 12:05 pm
I responded to his bet proposal the following day, and ended up making the offer four separate times over a five-day period. All I got was the sound of crickets. If you don’t like that, I’m sorry, but that’s the facts of what happened.
w.
MD.. “Thanks for the link, it just reaffirms what I posted above.”
A Pacific typhoon is a mature tropical cyclone….. (source Wikipedia)
I’m just defining the word Piers used in laymans terms. Folk aren’t interested in maximum wind speeds when their roof is cartwheeling down the street. They don’t sit around moaning about Piers saying that he forecast a typhoon, and look what happens, it’s just a tropical cyclone. My roof went and landed on 50 metres away but a typhoon would have taken it at least 200 metres and smashed it. I’m not buying his forecast again if he’s going to get his storms in a muddle and tell fibs.
By the way Willis, Piers has only two days left before he releases the August 45 day forecast.
So don’t you go upsetting him or he may make some errors and I’ll end up getting rained on hehehe!
Russ says:
July 13, 2012 at 8:15 am
Actually, Russ, as a long-time seaman I can assure you that a typhoon (also called a hurricane or a cyclone, depending on where it is located) has a very specific definition for both seamen and meteorologists alike. It depends on the speed of the wind. To be called a typhoon, the sustained winds have to be over 64 knots (74 mph, 33 ups). Otherwise, it’s not a typhoon, it’s something lesser like a “tropical storm” or a “tropical depression”, both of which have exact numerical definitions as well. To be called a “tropical depression”, for example, sustained winds only have to be over 30 knots (35 mph, 15 ups).
While that may not sound like a lot of difference, the missing link is that the energy in the wind goes up approximately by the cube of the wind speed … so a typhoon has winds nearly ten times as strong as a tropical depression.
So no, they are far from being the same. They have exact definitions, and if someone forecasts a tropical depression and it turns out to be a typhoon, there’s gonna be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I am sure that Piers, being a meteorologist, is well aware of the exact definition of a typhoon.
So go play elsewhere, it’s your choice. However, it’s not “holier than thou”. It’s just science, and science is a contact sport.
Here we do science, which means we don’t just wave our hands and say ‘well, Piers forecast six typhoons, there were only two, so let’s count tropical depressions as if they were typhoons’. We look at exactly what it was that Piers forecasted, and we see if it came to pass … I’m sorry if you don’t like that, but that’s one of the things that scientists do. Science is built around falsification, which is the process I just described—scientists look at other scientists’ claims, and see if they can be verified by real-world observations.
All that shows is how foolish a person is if they trust Wikipedia. Tropical revolving storms with winds over 64 knots are called either “hurricanes” if they occur in the Atlantic, “typhoons” if they occur in the North Pacific, or “cyclones” if they occur in the South Pacific. So no, a cyclone is not a baby typhoon …
w.
Russ says:
July 13, 2012 at 12:05 pm
From the time when I made the offer to bet him and when I said I gotten only “crickets”, Piers made no less than 5 posts responding to comments in this thread, including one that was responding directly to me … so no, your excuse won’t wash.
w.
Can anyone tell me how Piers is doing so far with his U.S.A. forecast please,Is it way off?close?spot on? (+/- 200 miles).
I ask this because I think he is good at long range weather forecasting here in Europe,all-though not precise,generally correct.
No-one takes Piers Corbyn seriously. It’s fairly obvious that he has been hired by the MetOffice to make us climate skeptics look stupid.
CORBYN LONG-RANGE FORECAST ASSESSMENT
for the first 2 weeks of July 2012 for Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada:
SPOT ON.
I’m here observing it live. Piers has been correct without exception so far.
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Willis, do you get paid by the word? That’s my only theory for why you avalanche so many words to convey almost nothing.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/07/12/just-the-facts-please/#comment-218617
Well, I’m leaving all the scientific stuff well alone, but being “foolish for trusting Wikipedia” ?? First thing I learned from Wikipedia tonight was this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon#Intensity_classifications Am I foolish to use this information to learn about the difference between typhoons etc. ? Or maybe semi-intelligent for using a stepping-stone to extend my knowledge about subjects I never read up on? How about this link, is that information not valid either? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Watts_%28blogger%29
Scientists checking other scientists sounds like a good idea to me, but please bear in mind that any observation made and interpreted also depends on the observer and the manner in which then information is interpreted. If you want to find a stick to hit a dog …
Discussing facts and results keeps people sharp. It may prompt them to improve their methods, tweak their results. As long as checking is done with the intention of honing the end results, not debasing the other person.
Paul Vaughan says:
July 13, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Until you post the actual forecast, not a paraphrase but the actual forecast, and we can take a look at it, that’s just more cheerleading.
Paul, one thing I’ve learned in writing for the web. No matter what I write, be it short and concise or long and detailed, there’s always some jerkwagon who will pop up to tell me that I’m doing it all wrong, and that they know the right way to go about what I’m doing. They then proceed to tell me that I should make my writing shorter / more personal / longer / more intense / denser / simpler / more interesting / less intense / less personal, somehow they always know just exactly what it is that I should do to make my writing better.
Meanwhile, my work has attracted close to a million page views per year for the last three years … and yours?
w.