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:
I’d like to point out something. People have looked at the forecast and gone yes, he sure got the forest fire thing correct, Colorado is about burned to the ground. And Piers shows a picture and gives a link to the extensive Colorado fires in his claim that he is correct. What’s not to like?
If you are one of the people who said that, go back and look at his forecast … he NEVER FORECAST FOREST FIRES IN COLORADO. According to his forecast, Colorado was just supposed to be “sunny”, and the fires were supposed to be in Arizona and New Mexico … like I said, Nostradamus would be proud.
w.
Anthony:
People like commodities traders and farmers pay Piers for his forecasts because he is consistently correct using only a laptop and makes them money. Meanwhile,The Met Office with its Supercomputer is consistently wrong and has people preparing for heat when there is cold.
You are being obtuse in criticizing the presentation esthetics of Piers’ forecasts. The substance is what matters.
For crying-out-load, he is on our side! Give him a break!
The issue with weather forecasts – even for the five-day periods that we seem to believe get it pretty much right – is that the actual weather we get is usually only reported once (or sometimes not at all), but the forecast is given many many times. Watch a typical TV news program and you will see weather forecasts at least every 10 minutes so if they are saying “hot” or “cold” that is what gets fixed in your mind, Tune in again tomorrow and what do you get – the forecast for today (or tomorrow) every 10 minutes – but what about yesterday? Never mentioned unless it is some kind of record event and even then this is probably a report from somewhere else as there will always be a record somewhere.
Therefore, the forecast is what people believe as opposed to the actual event. This is why media weather forecasters have become the front-line in arguments over CAGW – the way they present the forecasts drives the impression of what is happening.
Of course, this doesn’t apply to the people reading WUWT because we are all nerds who actually look at the records to find out what did happen yesterday! However, the thing we all need to remember is that we are very small minority who do this – most people end up believing the forecast and only notice the actual weather when an extreme happens when it is not forecast (or vice versa). Then the general public is up in arms about the Met Office (insert your own weather bureau here), but the rest of the time they are quite happy.
I’ve decided to go head-to-head with Piers in forecasting for the remainder of the year using my own unique forecasting approach. Like Piers, I cannot reveal my precise methodology as I wouldn’t want to be put out of business. It’s good to see him agreeing with my forecast for July in the UK: http://durotrigan.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/september-2012-forecast-heatwave-for.html
stephen richards says:
July 5, 2012 at 1:04 pm
PRAT !!!!!!
Since you are safely out of arms reach, I bow to your obviously superior intelect, sir.
To others who did not agree with my comment, my point was that “selling” weather predictions does not depend upon being right any more than selling horoscopes does.
No disrispect to P.Corbyn., I think he has the right idea, although I don’t have enough information one way or the other to comment on his success rate. The fact that the terms of use seems to prohibit divulging the detailed reports, even after the fact, makes me a little dubios. The current “public release” which in fact does not release anything useful, is clearly a clever marketing ploy.
I’m sure he could put out a couple of reports per month in less time than I spend reading WUWT, so the idea that he would “go out of business” if he was not getting it right, simply does not stand up.
That is the point I was making. It appears I was crediting some of the readership here with a little more inteligence that was strictly justified. Sorry.
One interesting point is that Ladbrokes, a large UK bookies, will not accept any bets on long range weather forecasts from Piers Corbyn. I doubt that anyone from the Met Office suffer this ban!
He is trying to earn a living from this so he does have the ‘showman’ about his presentations. He does not get large amounts of public money thrown at him like the Met Office, he earns money by results.
Pro Piers: His record is better than the UK Met Office
Contra Corbin: He doesn’t publish his method
Pro Piers: He’s Skeptic
Contra Corbin: He’s a showman
BTW Willis, what geographical accuracy is required to be a valid prediction? Colorado ain’t so far from Arizona and New Mexico.
Someone said he should publish his detailed reports after the period they covered – this covers his commercial interest and would, presumably, be great advertizing.
Southern Illinois in 2012 is experiencing 106F temperatures, but the same area in the cool cycle of 1967 had the same hot temperatures or greater. The thermometer under the tree in 1967 as we baled hay in the field read as high as 112F, while the thermometer in the barn loft under a steel roof read 132F as we put the bales of hay into the loft. Today, the people not yet born then find it hard to understand these kinds of heat waves have happened before in the same place.
Nostradamus supporters also only reveal the quatrains were correct after the fact, whilst ignoring the wrong ones, oops, ones that haven’t come true yet.
I can recall Piers on the news when i was a kid in the 70,s,the bookies were banning him from betting on the weather anymore.
Over the years he has been right enough to make me feel he is onto something.
From what i can gather he bases his forecasts on what has happened before,that sounds better than most the modelling the met office use.
He may not be spot on,but im pretty sure he is on roughly the right track.
But i can understand why you johnny foreigners get a bit shocked at his eccentric style.
Dont know about May but in June it was unseasonably cold in the UK (it was supposed to be Summer) based on our frequent visits. Yes a few days of high temps but then cold. Perhaps rather than a month he should be given a statistical assessment over a year together with the predicions by the Met office to be fair.!
Following Durotrigan’s lead , let’s all play the game:
July : unusually wet even by UK standards , though since the world is not going to suddenly loose the heat it has accumulated since 1965, this will still be one of the hottest 15 Julys evah (on record).
Expect flooding in the Calder Valley on a scale not see since the mid 60s.
Flock of migrating geese in V formation fooled by bizarrely warm air currents gets mistaken for a hijacked stealth bomber causing British army to launch SAM’s sited on residential roof tops near Olympic stadium. Family of 27 killed at wedding party in East London by falling SAMs.
August: almost as grey as July but slightly warmer. Also one of the hottest months of August on record. Especially wet and grey in the Pennines. Truely bizarre weather reported by BBC.
September. A couple of nice weeks earlier in the month before temperatures drop sharply towards the end. One of the warmest Septembers on record.
Overall outlook: there will be a 65% chance that this summer will be in the top 20% of the hottest UK summers on record with a 45% chance of it being in the hottest 10%. 5% chance of it being in the hottest 5%
Arctic sea ice extent second only to low of 2007. Guardian’s Suzzie Goldberg erroneously reports Arctic ice 95% below normal. Trenberth says “told you so”.
Piers Corbyn publishes a report highlighting the bits he got (very nearly) right.
daveburton says:
July 5, 2012 at 12:29 pm
Dave, you are perfect example of humanity. We all love to find corroboration for our theories in the simplest of events. Pier’s claim, made on February 21st, 2011 was as follows (emphasis mine):
Here is the USGS worldwide record of all earthquakes of magnitude 2.0 and greater since the turn of the 21st century.
SOURCE Note that I have doubled the figures for the first half of 2012 to give a rough idea of how many earthquakes there have been this year.
As you can see, far from having earthquakes “exceeding the levels of the most active extended periods in at least the last 100 years”, we haven’t even exceeded the record for the last ten years … and despite that, you (and I suspect Piers as well) are claiming a “wow” factor …
w.
Robert of Ottawa says:
July 5, 2012 at 2:25 pm
Robert, you make my point exactly, there are no fixed boundaries. That’s one of the Nostradamus aspects of his prognostications, if they are anywhere near where he predicted it, he claims it as a win.
Me, I’d settle for it occurring in the state(s) he actually specifies, rather than claiming success when there are fires in a nearby state.
w.
P. Solar says:
July 5, 2012 at 2:18 pm
While that may be correct, it was not your point, which was that it was a “logic fail” because the Met Office hasn’t gone broke … which was palpable nonsense, so I can see why you are now disowning it and trying to change the subject.
w.
Charles S. Opalek, PE says:
July 5, 2012 at 2:05 pm
Absolutely and definitively not. If we were to “give breaks” to people because we happen to believe in them, or they seem to support our ideas or theories, we would no longer be engaged in science.
Confirmation bias is already insidious enough, and because of it, in fact we need to investigate things we believe in harder than we investigate those we disagree with.
So no, I will give Piers no more of a break than I give the Met Office. Sorry, but that’s science.
w.
WeatherAction do come highly recommended from an unlikely source – the Climategate Mails
– in a fascinating exchange between an Agenda 21 Director and UEA
email 2318
to Mike Hulme at UEA from Julian Jones, Director Vision21 (Glos. C. C. Agenda 21)
“I am very concerned by the strong correlations between UK Winter Rainfall and solar activity and the failure of the authorities to incorporate such data in their forward planning – we appear to be paying a bitter price for this here in Gloucestershire.
Your rainfall data had been previously been published to illustrate increasing UK rainfall due to Greenhouse Gas emission led Global Warming – there would appear to be a strong solar component to this also.
By failing to acknowledge this and incorporate this in our plans we are also failing to produce a cohesive argument for Sustainable Development – certainly as far as the petrol protesters are concerned!”
Mike Hulme passes the mail on the Tim Osborne to respond,
From Tim Osborne UEA to Julian Jones –
“Mike Hulme asked me to reply to your email (copied above). The possible link between solar variability and winter precipitation intensity is very interesting – one of the scientific reviewers of our paper in fact asked us to add some comments about it to our original scientific paper. We declined to do so…..Nevertheless, as more observational data and improved statistical analysis techniques become available, it is becoming increasingly obvious that solar variations are important. For temperature, many scientists now feel that natural solar variations were the main contributor to the early 20th century warming that occurred between about 1910 and 1950. The dramatic warming since 1980, however, cannot be explained by changes in solar output. So, the role of solar variability is starting to be acknowledged, though it cannot explain all changes, and is much more uncertain than the greenhouse effect….”
Julian Jones responds
“….I have also asked Weather Action at SBU to provide longer time series
correlations between solar activity and terrestrial weather related
factors. We have used WA forecasts for planning the arable farming on 2500
acres here in Glos for several years – and they have been of great benefit.
They seem to achieve similar accuracy to conventional forecasts at 5 days
range, yet are produced months ahead, and are usually best at showing
overall trends, as well as extreme storm events. I appreciate such
forecasts could be produced by purely mathematical means; but the WA people
seem very sincere in their claim that these forecasts are produced by
correlations with solar activity – and certainly those graphs I originally
sent you would indicate (well beyond the chance of coincidence) that such
links do exist….”
This whole exchange was highlighted by E.M.Smith in an excellent post on the Climategate Mails and Agenda 21- well worth reading in its entirity – something of an eye-opener!!!
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/foia-agenda-21/
So please let’s have a comparison between the performance of WeatherAction and the Met Office, I think it would be somewhat fairer!!
I am fed up with the rain!
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 5, 2012 at 2:04 pm
[…]
If you are one of the people who said that, go back and look at his forecast … he NEVER FORECAST FOREST FIRES IN COLORADO. According to his forecast, Colorado was just supposed to be “sunny”, and the fires were supposed to be in Arizona and New Mexico … like I said, Nostradamus would be proud.
Arizona, New Mexico, close enough. Using CERN precision, 4-5 SD’s gets you in the ballpark. What’s not to like?
/sarc
Addendum to Marion says: July 5, 2012 at 3:35 pm
Sorry, missed out the second Climategate mail reference on the above post ie mail 4803.
http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/4803.txt
“Putting Piers Corbyn to the test”…..
Yes; put his forecasts to the test. Compare is past predictions with what has come to pass.
Although this article does not attempt that, many comments have prejudged the outcome.
Hopefully WUWT will present a follow up article where a range of Piers predictions are reviewed.
And “yes” focus on the substance not the presentation.
reminds me of a quote once on a NIWA website (New Zealand’s weather Bureau) that they get the weather right 50% of the time and that no one (in context, other weather bureaus) does better than that. I haven’t been able to find that quote again, and the NIWA website does get changed frequently to remove “offending” material. Of course, there are more than two possible weather states, so 50% is better than random, but not much better. If Piers is getting 75% he is doing well. The main points I took (from the video) was that he is at least searching for causal factors and that he acknowledges all theories (including his own) are inadequate.
Willis, there’s something very strange about USGS earthquake counts which show far more 4.something earthquakes than 2.something and 3.something earthquakes. The counts of big earthquakes are probably correct, but the counts of small earthquakes aren’t. The less-than-magnitude-4.0 counts are certainly wrong, and the 4.something counts are questionable.
Unfortunately, those are the only bars that are clearly visible in your chart.
If we just look at the frequency of really big earthquakes (8.0 & up) it appears that Piers might well be onto something:
2000: 1
2001: 1
2002: 0
2003: 1
2004: 2
2005: 1
2006: 2
2007: 4
2008: 0
2009: 1
2010: 1
2011: 1
2012: 2
That looks pretty normal until you recall that:
1) 2011’s magnitude 9.0 Honshu ‘quake happened just a few weeks after Corbyn’s prediction, and
2) the two 2012 ‘quakes are just so far, in the first half of the year.
So that’s three 8.0-or-larger quakes, so far, in the 15 months since his forecast, and one of them is ranked 4th largest since 1900. That seems to me to fit the definition of “significantly enhanced earthquake activity.”
I have been watching Piers Corbyns weather forecasts for a few years and noticed a good forecast within +/- 200 miles,although not precise, generally correct.
A remarkable achievement for a month in advance.