(elevated from a comment on the Putting Piers Corbyn to the test thread ) Willis Eschenbach says:
Martin Gordon says:
I note that Piers is declaring this period (13/14) a success on the Weather Action website.
Thanks for the link, Martin. I hope folks are starting to see why Piers claims such a high success rate. Here’s his map for the period:
OK, so what are the important parts of his forecast? Obviously, it’s the shaded areas where he predicts “thunder, tornados, and giant hail” in the north central region, and “thunder, tornados, and large hail”, in red meaning extreme warning, for the Great Lakes and eastward.
Here are his claims that he says “verify” his forecast.
R4 period 13-14 July extreme events verification:
=> USA
– Sev Thunder events Seattle ~13-14th http:fb.me/23Zp3jkkI CONFIRMS WeatherAction long range specific warning for 13-15th on USA Maps forecast 13-15 July + Piers discusses on fb
Let me echo Martin’s amazement that a single comment on Facebook is taken as a verification of his forecast. Anyhow, here’s the Facebook comment (emphasis mine)
Severe Thunderstorms Possible In Seattle (1:10PM PDT 7/13/12 -Charchenko) Hello everyone, after those exciting thunderstorms arriving earlier than usual through the seattle metro area. Were in a break in the weather right now up and down the I5 corridor but storms are still rumbling around port townsend and sequim areas. We are under a slight risk for severe thunderstorms west of puget sound which is extremely rare and usually only happens once every 5 years. We could see some large hail around 1″ and damaging winds possible, we could even see a few supercells! We will continue to update throughout the day monitoring these storms!
To which Piers replies:
Thanks for informative posting. VERY INTERESTING. Our WeatherAction long range forecast issued June29th [Free this month, email piers@weatheraction.com with ‘USA PLEASE’ in title bar] predicts thunder in Pacific NW ~ WA, OR, ID, MT for 13-15th July (and did not predict any for July prior to that). Thanks, Piers
I suppose you could claim that someone on Facebook saying “severe thunderstorms possible” is a verification of the forecast, but take a look at the actual weather service storm, hail, and tornado reports for those two days …
Very little happening there at all, certainly no concentrations of thunderstorms, either in his forecast areas or anywhere.
– 13 July BIGGEST hail in 30yrs http://www.king5.com/your-news/162444096.html WA NW USA
– Sev Thunder Warning Union+Wallowa Co OR 14th till 3:00pm PDT. #orwx CONFIRMS WeatherAction long range thunder specific forecast for OR 13-15th
I’m sorry, but a single report of hail in Oregon absolutely does not confirm a forecast of hail in the upper midwest, or Great Lakes/New England. Piers forecast said NOTHING about hail in the Pacific Northwest, this is totally bogus.
– Severe Thunderstorm Watch for portions of the area in ID until 11:00pmMDT/10:00pmPDT. #idwx CONFIRMS WeatherAction long range thunder specific forecast for ID13-15th
Again, there may have been a “severe thunderstorm watch” for Idaho … so what? Take another look at the actual storms shown above. I gotta give him credit, though … he has used other people’s warnings and claims that thunderstorms are “possible”, and also thunderstorm watches, in other words other people’s forecasts, as confirmation of his own forecasts. This is sheer forecasting genius, right up there with claiming that a forecast of a 50% chance of a typhoon was verified by no typhoons.
Finally, take another look at the map of his forecasts, and compare it to the storm reports. The few places that there actually was hail in the US were places that he did not forecast hail. The places he gave the strongest forecast for extreme thunderstorms, hail, and tornados saw only a couple scattered thunderstorms, not a single report of hail, and no tornadoes.
And yet he is trumpeting these results as a verification of his forecast? I gotta say, “verification” must mean something very different on his planet.
w.
This isn’t about Piers Corbyn directly. He strikes me as the “Music Man” of forecasting. This is more about weather forecasters in general. It’s easy to bash them. It’s a tough job because it’s so easy to see right now whether or not they were right. Chance of precipitation is probably the most common and obvious forcast by which they are judged. A couple of years ago I asked someone at the NWS via email why there was such a difference in the forecast when the week before said something like a 90% chance of rain and that morning’s said only a 10% chance. The answer he sent me (You weather forecasters out there please correct me if I misunderstood his answer.) basically said that the long range chance of precipitation (4 to 10 days out) referred to the chance of it raining anywhere in the forecast area. The short range forecast referred to the percentage of the forecast area that would get rain. In other words they may not be as off as is percieved. (But then again, 100 year forecast are always spot on.)
Willis, Piers appears to be using an almost identical method to claiming success as earthquake prognosticator Jim Berkland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Berkland
Every once in a while I have to explain to a friend why Berkland is full of it.
Very large sums of money are risked speculating on the weather. Weather derivatives alone are $5 billion a year industry. Markets for weather affected products, natural gas, electricity, wheat, even beer run into the trillions on a global basis.
Its typical of these markets that those who forecast better than the other fellow, keep the way they do it secret. Otherwise, their edge is lost. But, I’m curious as to how those who do it succesfuly predict the weather weeks or months ahead.
This is becoming a “get Piers” commentary. Must be heaps of other long range forecasters you can pick on. In comparison. Piers wipes the floor with his UK forecasts against the MET office and their supercomputers. What weather forecaster can claim a 100% success rate? He seems to make a living out of his forecasts and not on the government gravy train, so that must count for something.
Sure he has an ego, is eccentric and a pommie, but fair crack of the whip mates, give the man a go. Try picking on big Joe Bastardi for a change. I dare you!
Willis, you can check the precipitation nationally or by state for any date here:
http://www.cocorahs.org/Maps/ViewMap.aspx?state=usa
Hail was scant, and not where predicted, 7/13-15
I live near Vancouver. We went from hot to cool in 1 day — today and lightning/thunderstorms were predicted for last night and we got rain. I didn’t hear thunder overnight. But I was asleep.
Good forecast if it was made on June 29th.
Good call by Piers here in Ohio. We had some severe thunderstorms today.
I found a good quote the other day from Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature: social scientists should never predict the future, they have enough trouble predicting the past.
“As for times before 1979? it doesnt really matter one way or the other. world is getting warmer, you can expect expect less arctic ice..
‘ice free’ before 2050.. maybe as soon as 2016. volume is getting destroyed”
What looking only at statistics does…
John says he expects to arrive home between around 6pm & 6.15pm with probably a copy of the New York Times. He arrives at 5.55pm with the Washington Post. His friend Miss Right says “Well your estimate of what you said you would do is wrong so as far as I am concerned you are not even here”. He says “What’s up with that? ah, I forgot your first name was ‘Always’ ! ”
Firstly the innuendo conveyed by Willis’ title “Why Piers Corbyn claims such a high success rate (for this period ~13-15th).
1. What success rate did I claim? Tell me? Come on? What ‘rate’ and why ‘Claim’?
Answer: I didn’t claim any specific rate, I noted some events which confirmed our forecast. What’s Up with that? Of course your innuendo implies something doesn’t it? To what end?
2. Trickery from WE / Martin Gordon – portraying a chat on Facebook about one part of USA as ‘The assessment’.
Please get real and even fair. We have plenty more to say about the forecast on our website and more which we deal with internally. Why do you have to be so misleading?
3. Fortunately plenty of readers are not as stupid as W.E. etc appear to assume.
4. No forecast is entirely right and some will be more wrong than others. For this period the three main thunder areas were all confirmed – see that Accuweather video – in the approx times and regions forecast (Pacific NW, North Centre and N/E). As a comparison of a forecast one might make by random choosing of past pressure maps I looked at all the past maps for 1-15th July 2011 and none resembled what happened as closely as our forecast. What does that tell us?
5. Thank you Tom Rude, Brian D and Ian W and others for pointing out verifications of some specific events / regions around the US. One has to ask what is the chance of getting these three main thunder areas verified by luck , (along with any misses)?
6. What we get from W.E. is constantly flying to detail (hail size, precise locations, timings..) as a way of making us wrong – and we have some comments on that on our web:
http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=472&c=5 –
He shows a crass misunderstanding of our long range forecasts and their purpose (and note we define that not W.E.) and what others* say about them and worse still an unwillingness to learn. [*success measures come from users and auditors not us].
If W.E. really wants a short range forecast he only need look out of the window and not complain that I cannot can tell him two weeks ahead what detail he will see.
We have gone OTT with hail sizes in some areas (and UTT in Seattle but we have a reason) but SO WHAT? The point is
(i) We got the thunder regions and there was some hail.
(ii) There was even some large/giant (??) hail I don’t know how giant, certainly ginormous by English standards, in Seattle, described as the biggest ever in the region! – see the pic on
http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews12No33.pdf
And note us NOT saying ‘there would be hail’ there is NOT us saying ‘there would be none’. These are NOT forecasts of all possibilities, read the title: “USA Key Developments & Extremes forecast July 2012”. Detail at this stage is lower priority and skill, which is why W.E chooses to “assess” it.
I am pleased by our NW success here because while we have had tremendous success with eg NE blizzards in eg 2010-2011 these NW thunderstorms are more unusual than many other parts of USA and we have had difficulties in the past with getting to grips with the West / NW. So, subscribers who have asked for more there will be pleased; not that I expect W.E cares a damn about advancing forecasts. [What is WUWT for I wonder?].
For those who are interested: We did decidedly under-forecast this event in the PNW, true, that is because I decided to tread gingerly there in view of the hurdles we have had to overcome to get here. Nevertheless so far, so good, or as they say in Tesco ‘Every Little helps’
(iii) We have been expecting more large hail around the world as opposed to small hail in line with our climate forecast of moving towards a new Little Ice Age and this greater prevalence of large/ giant/ enormous / big / whatever hail around the world has been well confirmed.
7. W.E. a) Do you deny that this forecast period has skill – ie it is better than a random forecast?
b) Do you deny that all objective assessments of our forecasts (taking a long enough period) in UK, Europe. USA, specific world events… show we have significant skill?
c) Are you going to examine the whole season Tropical storm forecast 2011 which I sent Anthony last year, and users described as a game changer.
8. Now to the bigger picture starting from ‘The top’ Please look at:
http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews12No33.pdf
Our SLAT (Solar Lunar Action Technique) – yes “Nostradamus!” to you too but citizens are you going to get serious on this blog or join the dustbin of history? For What it’s worth my opinion of the WUWT set-up here has dropped, on a scale of ten, from 9 to 1 in the last few weeks). Yes, Our SLAT is about predicting events on the sun, their intermediate Solar wind / ionospheric / geomagnetic effects and then jet stream and frontal activity and pressure pattern changes and finally weather in regions. Look at the pdf:
1. Our prediction of Earth-facing (significant) solar activity around (just preceding) the R4 period 13-14th or so – CONFIRMED (no apology for the caps) by X flare / AR 1520.
2. Proton flux hit (eg) and various other parameters – massive aurorae and upping of geomagnetic activity (also about the coming R5 17-19th – WATCH IT!) – CONFIRMED
3. Three thunder regions in USA – CONFIRMED
4. APPROX pressure pattern USA – CONFIRMED
5. Various detail USA – NOT CONFIRMED (and some parts confusing, USA is large).
6. Widespread thunder FLOODS UK – CONFIRMED (with ‘brilliant’ timing) and I note in comments on WeatherAction a doubter has become a ‘backer’.
7. Approx pressure in Britain & Ireland – WELL CONFIRMED
8. Met Office having to upgrade a yellow to an amber warning (a change we predicted) – CONFIRMED (although this is not Long Range forecasting it is ‘end-gaming’ like our correcting the hurricane tracks of standard models one day ahead – see our 2011 ATS work, enquiries to piers@weatheraction.com)
9. Jet Stream south of Britain – CONFIRMED
10. Thunderstorms etc N/W Europe – CONFIRMED
11. Tornado events N/W Europe – CONFIRMED although the very significant tornado wave in Poland was east of what we expected, however there may have also been events in Germany.
12. General circulation Europe – ESSENTIALLY CONFIRMED but the penetration of thunderstorms got into Russia ending (much of) their heat (for now) early.
13. Up ticks of frontal activity compared to standard Met in New Zealand – these are consistently monitored but we issue no specific forecasts of circulation. – CONFIRMED
14. Very extreme events compared with normal (not specific forecasts) in various parts of world – Enormous floods in West Russia and South Japan for example and unusually cold blasts in South Africa. – CONFIRMED
General point. The solar and frontal action in this R4 was probably a bit above what we expected, in some respects – towards an R5.
Piers Corbyn, WeatherAction
Piers – show your work.
Victoria BC did get a lightning storm Friday night, as wellas the interior of BC.
http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/Lightning+storm+hits+Greater+Victoria+scattering+power/6932703/story.html
http://www.castanet.net/news/BC/77919/Lightning-strikes-spark-fires
Good prediction Piers.
Dr Eschenbach
If Her Britannic Majesty’s Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland had had the prescience to obtain a long-range forecast from Weatheraction in March 2012 as to the dangers to the UK economy of a third year of drought, they would be have been told that there was a very good likelihood that drought conditions would disappear before summer was out.
We entered April 2012 with rivers historically low, reservoirs historically low and groundwater at historic lows, on a par with the great drought of 1976 after 18-24 months of broadly below average rainfall.
Now, in mid July, all water restrictions have been lifted by all water authorities, all reservoirs are either full or at normal levels (with about one exception), rivers are unusually high and, with the exception of very slow-responding sandstone areas (a small percentage of areas dependent on groundwater supplies in the UK), groundwater levels have shown a highly unusual increase during summer and are now well within normal range in most areas of the UK. You can confirm this by visiting the UK Environment Agency website (just type that into Google and it comes up at the top of the search results) who have a ‘weekly water report’. Their weekly drought updates have now been stood down to fortnightly, to reflect the reduced pressures and risks remaining.
As other bloggers have noted in this thread, the Met Office’s prediction was a drier than normal spring. Something all UK gardeners will confirm is about as full of veracity as some of President Clinton’s declarations concerning his sexual activities…….
Dr Corbyn’s forecasts are by no means perfect but they are certainly not ‘astrology’, they are certainly not ‘unscientific’ (whether the method is a Newtonian mechanical approximation to the true situation, a quantum mechanical one or something more complex, only Piers will know) and they certain have skill, albeit imperfect ones.
I would suggest that, in common with many other areas of life, for some reason there is a need to destroy a British person who has just had staggering success in his July 2012 prediction of extreme weather events globally.
Do go and have a swim in Japan – there’s plenty of water for you to swim in there. Do go and bury some dead in Krasnodar – there is a business opportunity for gravediggers right now. Do come and enjoy our floods in the UK and try sleeping out in Portland, Dorset: you’ll enjoy that to be sure – you might catch pneumonia from the saturated ground which will seep into your sleeping bag or tent. Do go and get a suntan in Edinburgh – you’d have enjoyed a spanking 1.5 hrs sunshine total in the first 14 days of the month at a latitude where days will still be 18 hrs long. Do bail out the apple farmers in the UK – they could do with your charitable munificence this year after the spring destroyed the potential for a reasonable crop. All the animal farmers could do with you sending them a few million bales of hay too if we don’t get a dry spell soon, because all the hay in the fields will start rotting soon if the rain keeps up.
The UK folks all got told by the Met not to worry about any of that. Nature told them the hard way that the MO were spouting bullshit.
Piers has not submitted you a scientific paper for review by the way. Hard for you to understand that? He has shared a forecast from his business operations. He’s not seeking your approval or your consent as you are neither his bank manager nor his customer.
Most importantly, if you don’t like Piers’ forecasts, don’t buy them.
But do state if you have any financial interests from competing weather forecasters, from any media outlets who request that you speak as you have or from any political heavyweights who want to shut this London maverick up for rubbishing their AGW pseudo-science in the run-up to the 2012 Presidential Election………WUWT might like to add that rider to articles such as this also……..
“Steven Mosher says:
July 15, 2012 at 6:27 pm
As for times before 1979? it doesnt really matter one way or the other. world is getting warmer, you can expect expect less arctic ice..
‘ice free’ before 2050.. maybe as soon as 2016. volume is getting destroyed.”
Hey if we were back in the Late 1940s to early 1960s. The Arctic Ice cap could have been obliterated years ago. If some of the Science Proposals to melt the Arctic Ice cap to improve the climate were carried out. That included nuking it!
kuhnkat says:
July 15, 2012 at 11:32 am
See the other thread, this is far from the first claimed success of his that is bogus.
My problem is not that the forecast is wrong … my problem is that he is claiming that it is right. And for that, I don’t need “10 forecasts”.
w.
_Jim says:
July 15, 2012 at 12:43 pm
And yet another part of his forecast has problems …
w.
I have recently put together a proposal for a change to the way a dictionary describes the word “Eclipse” in the hope that the penny will drop as to how Piers puts together his monthly forecast using Solar activity with the position of the Moon.
I believe Piers is onto something very important in the way the Lunar Phase’s play a part in changes to our climate…http://climaterealists.com/?id=9934
Re-Inventing the word “Eclipse”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eclipse?s=t dictionary.reference.com
The generic astronomy term for an “Eclipse” is used for a crossing of a shadow from the Moon to the Earth or the Earth to the Moon i.e. during these two episodes, one of the said objects passes in front of the Sun casting a shadow on the other.
It has become increasingly obvious to regular readers of Piers Corbyn “Red Warning” forecasts that he is onto something very important with the forecasting of “R” periods, in that, there is more going on between the Sun, Moon and Earth then shadows crossing.
The “R” periods have supported and demonstrate there are climatic as well as geological changes during these periods on our world and that seems to be an enhancement by a physical change to the Earth. i.e. the development of Hurricanes and Typhoons seem to “power up” when there is a lunar phase in combination with Solar Activity as well as an increase of erupting Volcanoes and Earthquakes.
The research and investment needed to conclude such a statement as being scientifically plausible will be difficult to find as grants for Climate Research seem totally bias to projects that bolster “Man Made” climate change.
That is not to say someone or an institution will come forward to fund this very important work. Afterall there have been Trillions invested in the spurious and very silly idea that “man” has changed our climate only to have found NOTHING of ANY significance.
Investing in research that show REAL physical changes in the Earths climate from the Sun and Moon is not such a crazy request to make, and if you are involved with institutions that would benifit from this research drop Piers a line at WeatherAction.com
In honour of the work of Piers Corbyn I will try to re-invent the Dictionary term “Eclipse” to incorporate:
“Eclipse”: A monthly or weekly astronomical event between the Sun, Moon and Earth, whereby the passage of the Solar Wind during a Lunar Phase is seen to make physical changes to the Earth’s Climate.”
You never know, in the process of time, this may well be a change to the Dictionary that our children will see.
Good luck Piers, keep up the great work
TomRude says:
July 15, 2012 at 12:50 pm
I’ve invited him to write a detailed reply regarding his questionable claim of success for his forecast for six typhoons in the central/western Pacific in July of 2008. This is a forecast that was supposedly verified by his independent auditors … since there were only two typhoons in the area during all of that July, I’ve asked him to give us the names of the typhoons that verify his forecast.
He has not replied, but it is early days yet, so there is hope.
Again, the issue is not that his forecast was wrong. It is that he is claiming success on a forecast that didn’t come true in any sense.
w.
Almost a Laplander says:
July 15, 2012 at 2:07 pm
First, please, folks, don’t do this. If you are going to discuss one of his forecasts, provide a link to the forecast. Otherwise, it’s just an anecdote that has no specificity. If you have a cite, Laplander, I’d love to see his forecast.
Second, are you serious? You say that in April he predicted that May would be the coldest in 100 years … and then you say May “wasn’t especially cold”.
Then you go on to claim that is a huge success in forecasting?
Sorry, AaL, but there is a name for a prediction of the coldest May in 100 years when May turns out to be not especially cold.
The name for that kind of prediction is a FAILURE. I don’t care if it was warm in June. If he had predicted a cold June, I’d congratulate him … but according to you, he didn’t predict that, instead he made a 100% incorrect prediction about May.
Folks, I’m not buying the “he got it close” excuse. It doesn’t matter if he got it close. A hit is a hit, and a miss is a miss. Earlier he predicted fires in New Mexico and Arizona, and claimed success for fires in Colorado. Again, that is a failure. If the Met Office predicts a clear, sunny weekend and it rains on both your Saturday barbecue and your Sunday wedding, are you going to credit the Met Office with a successful prediction because it was clear on Friday?
Well, neither am I …
w.
Willis,
First you claim that he is boosting his claimed accuracy by lying then respond to me saying that this post is only about his lying??? Running back your claims huh?? I guess guess the Nick Stokes syndrome is spreading. Is that how you want to be known??
KnR says:
July 15, 2012 at 2:28 pm
And I suppose that if astrologers get it wrong people will not pay them and they will go out of business?
You underestimate people’s ability to find one correct item in a dozen and call it all a success. You also underestimate Piers’s ability to claim success for failures.
See those two big areas on the map where Piers said there would be thunderstorms, giant hail, and tornados?
There were ALMOST NONE OF ANY OF THOSE IN THE SHADED AREAS, so his largest, most important, printed in bright red claims were a total flop … but he is claiming success, and people are lapping it up, on the basis of one report of hail in Oregon and a thunderstorm in the Northwest. The temperature in Texas wasn’t hot, the forest fires didn’t “re-ignite”, and yet people here are passionately defending the “success” of his forecast.
w.
Harriet Harridan says:
July 15, 2012 at 2:46 pm
My problem isn’t that he gets it wrong, which he does, and so does every forecaster. My problem is that he inflates his statistics by claiming a success when there is none. For example, he forecast a 50% chance of a typhoon … then claimed success because there was no typhoon. Of course if there had been a typhoon that would be a success as well …
Or in this case, he forecast huge areas of storms, hail, and tornadoes that didn’t happen … but he’s still claiming success.
That’s absolute nonsense. I’d love nothing more than to show an extra-terrestrial influence on the weather. My problem is that I am a scientist, and I simply haven’t seen the evidence. Not that I haven’t looked. I corresponded at some length with Ted Landscheidt trying to understand his method, without success. I’ve run correlation comparisons of dozens of weather phenomena against the solar cycles … and found almost nothing.
So you have it exactly backwards—I am biased in favor of a solar influence on the weather. I just haven’t found it yet.
w.
Piers Corbyn’s forecast for the Olympics has just been quoted by London mayor Boris Johnson as follows –
“We’re very confident that there will be a lot of rain – a deluge, really – during the entire Olympic period, and we are 80 per cent sure that the Opening Ceremony itself will feature heavy rain, including hail and thunder.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/9402260/To-avoid-the-Olympic-weather-forecast-please-look-away-now.html
I can’t help feeling that this post of WUWT is rather like a pedigree dog suddenly deciding to gnaw at its own tail….
Willis Eschenbach says:
I’d love nothing more than to show an extra-terrestrial influence on the weather.
Natural climate oscillations are result of the sun and Earth acting in concert, oscillation of the Earth magnetic field is one of the best proxies around.
I am still waiting for Steve Mosher to publish his spectral analysis:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/22/comparing-ghcn-v1-and-v3/#comment-1016189
It appears he found something ‘interesting’, I hope it is what I call ‘geo-solar oscillation’which I think I may have identified already.