WUWT reader Tony Brown writes:
BBC to fire the Met Office from supplying its forecasts and end its 92 year old relationship
The Met Office is close by me in Exeter. Its local forecasts are often hopeless and inaccurate and sometimes I feel they would get it right more often if they looked out of their window instead of at their computer screens.
However, British weather is notoriously fickle and difficult to predict. The competitors are a NZ group (!!!) and Meteo, which seem a poor alternative. I have no knowledge of the former but Meteo I have found very unreliable when using them on the Continent.
WUWT reader Fretslider writes:
The Met Office has lost its lucrative weather forecasting contract with the BBC after nearly a century of providing the service. Negotiations to renew the deal hit a dead end and a new firm is expected to take over next year.
The BBC said it was legally required to open up the contract to outside competition and secure the best value for money for licence fee payers.
Dutch and New Zealand firms are said to be in the running for the contract, which is believed to make up a sizeable share of the £32.5 million a year the Met Office receives from commercial organisations, according to the Mail on Sunday.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3207392/Met-Office-fury-BBC-gives-contract-worth-millions-foreigners.html
My viewpoint is that this is much like the DirecTV and The Weather Channel skirmish. DirecTV and TWC failed to reach a price in negotiations, and TWC kept holding out for more, so DirecTV said “adios” and actually took them off the channel lineup, then about a month later, after TWC made all sort of noise rallying public support, DirectTV brought them back, at a reportedly much lower compensation rate.
I think this may be a lot like that, but given the demonstrated lack of predictive skill then hiding their bad forecast by the Met Office, plus their famously failed “BBQ summer”, I think they’ll have a fair amount of trouble rallying public support.
Josh also has something to say about it.
UPDATE:
Dr. Richard Tol adds in comments:
This has nothing to do with the quality of the Met Office forecasts. By law, the BBC has to put this contract out for tender. The Met Office’ offer was not competitive. The BBC cannot go back on this decision as the remaining competitors would sue them.
I think it has at least something to do with forecast accuracy, since the BBC didn’t want to pay what the Met Office was asking. If the value was worth it, why wouldn’t they pay it? By putting it to tender, BBC basically said “we don’t think your forecasting is worth your ask”, so take your chances with bidding.
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I used to adore the BBC, whose news reporting used to be balanced, factual, dispassionate. Since it shifted to emotive left wing propaganda I now refuse to pay their annual licence fee, and don’t watch live TV. The initials now stand for Bolshevik Brainwashing Corporation.
The BBC is starting to lose a lot of money from non-payers, they should be getting more money since 100K+ homes get created each year, but their income is falling. That may be one reason why are no longer prepared to pay what the Met Office ask for.
I wonder how much of this past Met Office contract price was skimmed off to fund Climate Change propaganda?
The BBC don’t lose any money. They collect the fee on behalf of the government but they don’t pay themselves. Gov. set the budget and that’s what the BBC work with. BBC has never lost a penny due to non-payment of the license fee, not in the entire history of its being.
There is a lot of misinformation in this thread. I don’t know how much is wilful ignorance for political or ideological means or just simple ignorance. Either way the information is out there to be better educated.
Me too, Brent.
I stopped watching Live TV about five years ago even though my license had still about three months to run.
I’ve caught occasional glimpses of live TV in other peoples houses or establishments but I’ve never watched it at home since that moment.
What started as a principle has become a way of life. I do watch BBCi, a service I would pay for but don’t need to at present, Netflix and YouTube for entertainment if I discount radio, blogs and other sources of web-based edutainment.
If the BBC had stayed as I’d remembered it, however faultily, as a neutral, dispassionate medium I would likely have continued to automatically switching the TV on when I got back from work and switching it off before retiring for the night.
It didn’t and I’m grateful for that. I watch what I need to when it’s the time that’s right for me. I discovered that I really didn’t need to know who’d won the Eurovision Song Contest as it happened.
Thank you BBC. Maybe, it wasn’t the way you thought it would work out but you did me a massive favour.
Your stupidity, my salvation!
MetOffice recently expanded their activity, they are going into space ‘weather’ forecasting, maybe they have good look at the Svensmark’s hypothesis and decided there might be something worthwhile in it.
This entices me to bring to your attention something odd in the most recent space weather:
About 16th of August the earth was hit by CMEs ( Link1) and as expected neutron count fell ( Link2 ). Svensmark says it should affect cloudiness and the terrestrial weather.
Today 23rd August there was another direct hit (see above link1) but the neutron count went ‘nuts’ at the time of the flair, and today count is starting to move in the wrong direction (see above link2).
I don’t wish to get it totally wrong, perhaps Dr. Svalgaard if around, could elaborate further.
Let me clarify: The issue is not whether the Met Office forecasts are accurate. The issue is whether the competition can deliver (a) similar accuracy at a lower price or (b) better accuracy at a similar price. I think it is (a): similar model, same data, similar computer, and so same prediction skill — but much less overhead.
I suspect you are correct. But within all this is the way in which the BBC forecasts lack detail. As a child in the 1950s I remember the regional radio broadcasts of weather forecasts being so detailed that they covered all major towns in (in my case) Lancashire. And this without satellites and computers. I suspect that that information might still be available but the BBC’s obsession with soundbites prevents any sensible forecast from being broadcast these days.
Semantics, they are useless at doing the job, (accuracy) and they want a big computer to make more bad calculations with bad data (cost overheads) plus if they cannot negotiate a contract with another government agency they are tottally and utterly incompetant and dont deserve the respect of anyone (not that they have too much of that)
similar model?
http://www.meteogroup.com/en/us/research/multi-model-approach.html
Steve: the Met Office also uses a multi-model ensemble
over on Bishop Hill, there is a sound clip of the Met Office man admitting that they use the profits on their weather forecasting business to subsidize other activities, particularly climate research
I dont have much sympathy when the information offered on a site we have already paid for with our licence fee is so pathetically poor. It used to at least have predicted temperatures and wind strengths easily accessible. I can click on several sites and get rain / sun predictions 2-5 minutes ahead – the BBC/met office you have to wait for 2 hours for an up date to the observations map (even longer at night) and this is regularly badly updated or taken off screen. accuweather gives a 2 minute breakdown for the following 2 hours – totally invaluable to anyone who works outside and is subject to the elements. The maps and hourly forecast regularly do not agree with each other and are quite obviously updated at different times and frequency to each other – hopeless. I used to believe in the BBC and Met office as I am a patriotic sort…. however they are now an expensive embarrassment who do not deserve payment through the licence fee – and that applies to both the BBC and MO
Does accuracy in weather for Great Britain really matter? In my lifetime I’ve spent a total of about 20 weeks in Great Britain, and I don’t ever remember anything other than cloudy with a chance of a shower.
I remember a British comedian on the old Ed Sullivan Show who noted that visitors often made that observation. He then extolled the virtues of the UK summer. he said “Last year we had it on a Thursday”.
TAG
Not quite.
The most accurate description of a British summer I’ve ever heard is “2 days of hot sun followed by a thunderstorm”. I’ve lived here all my 58 years and this seems to be uncannily accurate!
Mark
Here is a list of sunshine hours for American cities.
http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/average-annual-sunshine-by-city.php
I note that all of them have sunshine hours appreciably more than my own town on the south coast, reckoned to be one of the sunniest places in the UK.
Perhaps you could explain to our government that spending vast sums of tax payers money on solar farms is a bad idea at our latitude. They might then invest in the grown up power stations we urgently need if the lights are not to go out.
Tonyb
You should have come to Scotland where we have a different generic forecast. “Showers with occasional longer periods of rain”
A word of support for the Met Office, in relation to short term forecasts at least. As a young man in the 70s-80s I remember getting really upset with utterly wrong forecasts issued by the Met. on TV for the following day. Later that following day, not even a hint of an apology for the error which was made- just a new 24-hr forecast issued with the same certain authority as attended that on the previous night. Infuriating.
I think it all began to change when they could see the weather systems and the way they behaved on the satellite pics. Matching this to the measurements they were taking, they could learn a lot and 24 hr and to some extent 48 hour forecasts have improved very substantially. (Though it’s difficult to tab this as they issue updates every couple of hours, so they’re bound to be able to show a point where they do mostly get it right.!) I would, in general, regard 24-hour forecasts as pretty reliable. For this, only the most rudimentary models are required.
Longer term forecasts have shown little sign of a similar improvement, however, and their manifest failures are as unacknowledged as were the seventies short-term errors. The forecasters are completely unabashed by their failures! Models required for long-term forecasts are clearly inadequate, perhaps through fundamentally wrong assumptions, and perhaps because tiny chaotic divergence early in the sequence make the result uncomputable. If the satellites can help with this once again, it will be through satellite data undermining major assumptions about the climate system which currently are written in to the models..
(p.s. Richard Tol is right, that BBC has to be seen to go through this exercise, so the headlines are perhaps not that important)
Gotta love this: “The competitors are a NZ group (!!!) . . .”
Mate, we put up with your crappy cars for years. And, maybe, the Kiwis know what they’re doing. Very interesting weather down here.
Whomsoever delivers the forecast may well use Met Office data for their presentation – after all, isn’t it about interpreting the data? If the BBC want to interpret their own data ‘wrongly’ perhaps a competitor can use the same information ‘correctly’?
Either way, the Met Office get their cut.
They might possibly use a Met Office analysis, but why? – the US Global Forecast System is free and at least as far as website -based forecasts go its output seems at least as good as the met office’s.
huh. GFS sucks
“The Met Office lost its BBC contract because of rows over dumbing down of broadcasts and fears that it could not produce a decent phone app, sources have claimed.
Although a statement from the corporation suggested that he Met Office bid had not been the best value for money, a source at the BBC said that it was its inability to produce a good enough app for mobile phones that was the main reason behind the decision. The current Met Office weather app is rated just two stars.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/bbc/11819164/Met-Office-lost-BBC-contract-over-dumbing-down-rows-and-weather-app.html
To use an old cliche, it’s worse than we thought.
Toll’s comment sounds right. In Australia and the UK there are rigorous closed bid competitive tender rules which are designed to prevent public officials giving corrupt contracts to their mates. If a public body doesn’t accept the lowest bid, they have to answer a lot of questions, even face legal action from other bidders.
In practice of course what often happens is public officials tip off their “friends” and help them submit the lowest bid, by telling them what everyone else is bidding. The corrupt friends then cut corners to make their profit.
When checking up on the BBC announcement I saw these two marvelous headlines:
April: UK weather: Britain to sizzle in three-month heatwave with temperatures reaching 28C
August: What a washout! A British summer to forget
OK,
Conservative government in the UK wants public broadcast weather reports to be assigned to the ‘best’ bidder (‘best’ one can disagree upon; i.e. cheapest or more predictive). Shocker!
People often defend the Met Office’s poor forecasts on the basic the the UK’s weather is fickle and very difficult to forecast. This is true. In which case why do we spend billions trying to forecast it? And why waste millions of BBC licence payer’s money on it? Go with the cheapest, they will be just as inaccurate as the most expensive….
If that dartboard is meant to illustrate the accuracy of Met Office forecasting then it is completely misleading. There is actually a dart stuck in the dartboard.
Whoever gets the contract their forecasts couldn’t be worse than the ones on German TV. It’s the same forecast everyday – Wetter!
Nice pun, Andrew. Made me chuckle:)
It’s a no-brainer.
It has to go to the NZ group.
Their weather is much, much nicer than Dutch or British weather.
Thank you for AccuWeather. And it has only gotten better over the last two decades..
Currently, comparing AccuWeather vs BoM
Brisbane
For Tuesday, 25/08/2015 AccuWeather 26C (High) 14C (Low)
For Tuesday, 25/08/2015 BoM 28C (High) 16C (Low)
Ok, thats not bad, I thought it would be a lot worse than that. 🙂
Regards
Climate Heretic
If they can’t forecast weather with their new super computer,
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2014/new-hpc
how they dare to predict the world climate?
LOL
“Its local forecasts are often hopeless and inaccurate and sometimes I feel they would get it right more often if they looked out of their window instead of at their computer screens.”
Replaace ‘local’ with ‘global’ and what a perfect assessment of Climate Science.
I remember the Meteorology Department on HMS Aircraft Carrier didn’t have a window to see what was really happening outside. During refit a port hole was added only for the forecasters to cover it up with bulky equipment. Sure they had the area forecast sorted, but locally when the fog rolled in …
After Hurricane Iniki a caller said he would like to have tied the local radio storm reporter to a coconut tree on Kalapaki Bay to report the true disaster that was really happening. The station was in a concrete windowless room and belittled the events that were unfolding.
Always find it odd when travelling in the UK. They seem to provide unrealistically granular weather forecasts over an already small land mass. Its not wonder people perceive it to be inaccurate.
It has little to do with accuracy, perceived or not. We are a small island in the path of the Gulf stream. With competing fronts from the African and Siberian continental land masses. The weather in the UK is unique in the world, differing greatly over short distances and in short periods of time.
There is a reason we Brits are obsessed with the weatgher. We just have so damned much of it.
Ironically but not really relevant, the only place on earth that has similar weather patterns is New Zealand.
They do actually measure how well they do
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/who/accuracy/forecasts
86% of minimum temperature forecasts are accurate to within +/- 2°C on the first night of the forecast period (36-month average).
roflmao yet again. hell, anyone could hit 86% accuracy with a 4 c window to hit.
As a New Zealander, the ‘Island Nation’ stuff Brits promulgate about the problems forecasting their weather makes me smile. NZ is also an Island Nation, but is a rather larger distance from other land masses than the UK: we have the incredibly stormy Tasman Sea between us and Australia, and the other coast is bounded by the Pacific, there no major landfalls between NZ and Antarctica or South America.
Our forecasters do OK, considering they face an order of magnitude more difficulties than their Brit counterparts.
you don’t have the Gulf stream. It’s the overriding factor in our weather.
This has to be a joke. I was recently in the UK for 5 weeks and I was amazed at how accurate the Met Office was considering all the interactions between cold, warm and stationary fronts that occurred. New Zealand has NOTHING like this level of interaction; warm fronts are rare (it’s still not as far from the equator as the UK). Its weather in comparision to the UK is extremely predictable and stable. Cold fronts sweep across from the Tasman Sea which you can see days out! So to say “an order of magnitude more difficult” is an absolute joke and shows that you clearly have no grasp whatsoever of the meteorology of either Britain or New Zealand.
There once were two cats of Kilkenny…