Posts by Paul Hedderly 4 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Oct 2007
They got the weather round our way completely wrong yesterday - even the forecast mid-morning was predicting monsoons during the afternoon. So of course I got sunburn.
They can't predict the weather 3 hours in advance...
..but they can predict that 2016 will see record temperatures?
Are they defining the results and the conclusion 4 months before the sample period starts and 16 months before it ends? How scientific.
AC quoted trivial differences in initial conditions, or in processing methods, will lead to divergences in weather forecasts”
I have a real problem with that statement - if a difference in initial conditions leads to (significant) differences in weather forcasts... then how can you classify those initial differences as "trivial" ?
My understanding of trivial is of that which has no consequence....
So if these weather/climate guys don't even understand what is trivial and what is not... and can't write+test code that works accurately on different hardware platforms to produce the same results... why should we trust their results at all?
My experience of the recent met office weather forcasting is pretty poor. I have a strong suspicion that after some fairly major extreme weather event "misses" - they now over predict rain/snow/wind etc so that they can't be blamed for not warning people - leading to generally overly negative forecasts.
Or put it another way - in the last two weeks, at home (South London) we've been forecast "heavy" rain on at least 9 days - of which we've had a little rain on two and short bursts of heavier rain on two more. Thats not stellar, or any good for our grass!
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