Tag Archive for Met Office

Met Office can’t predict tomorrow’s weather but can predict it in 10 years’ time?

February 22, 2012 Bullshit, Climate Change, Technology 3 comments

The British government’s Science and Technology Committee yesterday said that the Met Office needs to spend lots of money on new supercomputers to enable them to more accurately predict the weather 5 days in advance.

Met Office DartboardDespite being one of the top three weather prediction services in the world, the Met Office struggles to predict tomorrow’s weather.  Only a couple of weeks ago they predicted several inches of snow overnight and we got nothing at all.  The other day they predicted no snow at all and we had snow.  How often have you watched the weather forecast, gone on a day trip and been caught in a deluge despite the Met Office predicting a glorious day?

People have very little faith in the Met Office’s ability to predict the weather and rightly so.  The media are slowly turning away from the Met Office because of their poor track record and turning to alternative providers.  According to Chaos Theory it should be possible to predict the weather from any event – a butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world, it’s all cause and effect.  The computing power required to calculate an accurate weather prediction based on the small amount of data available is phenomenal though and it’s never going to be possible to get a completely accurate forecast.

With enough technology and accurate data, it would be possible for the Met Office to produce weather forecasts with an acceptable margin of error.  But the technology doesn’t exist yet, the data isn’t accurate enough and the costs involved in developing the technology required would be prohibitive.

All of this raises an important point: the Met Office, by its own admission, can’t predict the weather 5 days in advance but they are one of the primary sources of data for the British government’s global warming tax scams.  It’s hard to believe that the British government would employ fund managers to manage UK Plc’s investments if they had a track record of losing more money than they made or economists at the Treasury who’ve consistently been unable to budget more than a week in advance so why do they employ the Met Office, who can’t predict tomorrow’s weather with more than 70% accuracy, to tell them what the weather is going to be like in 10 years’ time?

Met Office severe weather warning out by almost 24 hours

December 29, 2009 WTF? One comment

The Met Office issued a severe weather warning yesterday for Shropshire, Herefordshire and eastern Wales, warning of up to almost 10″ of snow overnight.

I excitedly looked out of my window this morning to see this fine example of global warming at work and … nothing.  The forecast had been revised for late morning/early afternoon.  Took #1 to a birthday party shortly after lunch, no snow.  Went to the shops, no snow.  Picked up #1 at 5pm, no snow.

Finally, at about 7:15 this evening it started snowing.  It’s settling despite the couple of hours of rain we had previously but unless it starts coming down heavily through the night it’s going to be a light dusting in the morning.  Certainly nothing like the heavy and sudden snow we had in February.

All of which leads me to one very important question.  The Met Office is the British government’s advisor on climate change, handing it carefully crafted “predictions” on the climate for decades in advance.  Their predictions are used to form British government policy on the environment, taxation, industry, recycling, transport, civil liberties, energy security and more.  But if they can’t predict the weather 12 hours in advance, why do they expect us to believe their apocalyptic climate change predictions and why does the British government pretend that they are a reliable source of information?

Until the Met Office stop making outrageous, headline grabbing predictions like the annual prediction of a BBQ summer that fails to materialise, complete with associated health warnings and advice to paint your house white on the outside to reflect the heat, I can’t take them seriously.  While they continue to issue severe weather warnings that never happen or are completely out with their timings and predictions of how severe the weather is going to be, I will continue to treat every prediction they make with suspicion.

Weather forecasting is never going to be an exact science but missing the mark by almost 24 hours on a severe weather warning for 10″ of snow is ridiculous.  The Met Office would struggle to predict last week’s football results, let alone the earth’s climate in 50 years time based on dodgy data and an obvious inability to organise a piss-up in a brewery.

Update: In the time it’s taken to type this post, the rain has turned to sleet and the snow is disappearing.