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IainT
8,022 posts
107 months
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turbobloke said: IainT said: grumbledoak said: dickymint said: I was going to comment along the lines of "Shouldn't they try correctly predicting the weather in London right now first?" but the best rated comments say it all. I wouldn't be so quick to decry the Met's ability to get the weather right mostly. We all recall the big failures but that's likely just confirmation bias in action. Judith Curry wrote an interesting piece lamenting the poor state of US forecasting and the Met is held up in high regard according to accuracy... http://judithcurry.com/2012/03/30/u-s-weather-pred...I'm all for tarring and feathering them on their climate models though! It was the high profile BBQ summers that never happened which did it for Mystic Met. Also wasn't one of the recent freezing winters supposed to be warm and wet? Ooer missus. Not to mention trying to fudge what they had said - which was different to two different audiences at different times on the same forecast iirc. Weather Action allegedly has a far better approach to long-range forecasting, using a solar-based technique. I totally agree regarding he BBQ summer failure and failure to predict a long hard winter. Twice. In a row. However, on a short-range basis they generally do get the weather right. It's just when they try to go beyond the next week or two that the complexity of weather/climate are beyond them.
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turbobloke
55,489 posts
129 months
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IainT said: turbobloke said: IainT said: grumbledoak said: dickymint said: I was going to comment along the lines of "Shouldn't they try correctly predicting the weather in London right now first?" but the best rated comments say it all. I wouldn't be so quick to decry the Met's ability to get the weather right mostly. We all recall the big failures but that's likely just confirmation bias in action. Judith Curry wrote an interesting piece lamenting the poor state of US forecasting and the Met is held up in high regard according to accuracy... http://judithcurry.com/2012/03/30/u-s-weather-pred...I'm all for tarring and feathering them on their climate models though! It was the high profile BBQ summers that never happened which did it for Mystic Met. Also wasn't one of the recent freezing winters supposed to be warm and wet? Ooer missus. Not to mention trying to fudge what they had said - which was different to two different audiences at different times on the same forecast iirc. Weather Action allegedly has a far better approach to long-range forecasting, using a solar-based technique. I totally agree regarding he BBQ summer failure and failure to predict a long hard winter. Twice. In a row. However, on a short-range basis they generally do get the weather right. It's just when they try to go beyond the next week or two that the complexity of weather/climate are beyond them. Quite. I'm sure I read a reasonably authoritative source that cited a stat on short-range UK weather forecasting - if you say tomorrow's weather will be the same as today's there is a slightly better than 50:50 chance of being correct. I'll take a look for the source. Unfortunately the Mystic Met are worse than a tossed coin far too often even if they get it right more often than their fellows stateside can manage.
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TheHeretic
68,024 posts
124 months
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Just had a response on twitter about the MWP global paper, and apparently it's "not significant". Apparently the IPCC being wrong about such things, as well as facets of the scientific community, is not significant. The mind boggles.
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turbobloke
55,489 posts
129 months
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Globs
11,749 posts
100 months
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IainT said: I wouldn't be so quick to decry the Met's ability to get the weather right mostly. They ALWAYS get the current temperature in Cambridge wrong. Without fail it's always +2.5degrees or more, warmer than it really is. I cannot believe Bedford (where they measure it) is ALWAYS at least 2.5C warmer. While they fail to read a simple thermometer I have no faith is their abilities that rely upon that..
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IainT
8,022 posts
107 months
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turbobloke said: Quite. I'm sure I read a reasonably authoritative source that cited a stat on short-range UK weather forecasting - if you say tomorrow's weather will be the same as today's there is a slightly better than 50:50 chance of being correct. I'll take a look for the source.
Unfortunately the Mystic Met are worse than a tossed coin far too often even if they get it right more often than their fellows stateside can manage. Ok, I've gone back to the source article that Curry made her claims from (http://www.wjla.com/blogs/weather/2012/03/the-u-s-has-fallen-behind-in-numerical-weather-prediction-part-i--14897.html) and it's making claims from a number of papers but is specifically about Medium Range Weather Forecasts (MWP) using Numerical Weather Prediction (i.e. super computers + models(!!!)). The statistical analysis of predictions vs reality is the judge of these and all it discerns is that the Met is 2nd most accurate and that all predictions are gradually improving. Of course, saying something is 2nd best could be accurate while it's actually next-to-useless. While I think we should hold the Met's ideological position in absolute contempt they're clearly not the worst at actually doing their real job. Well, by real, I mean the job we expect them to do...
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turbobloke
55,489 posts
129 months
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Agreed they're not all bad in all ways but they've had too many public humiliations to retain overall high levels of credibility - though as you say, the highest levels of contempt must be reserved for their climate change antics. So we have this forecast fiasco: "Bishop Hill has located the 'supposedly secret' winter forecast sent to the British government. The details of the forecast produced are nothing short of astounding." not least as it was different to the other versionhttp://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/21/what-sort-of...Linked to this where the BBC (who else) is complicit: "It’s now time for those who are funded by taxpayers’ money and who engineered the deception, and those who allowed it to happen, to pay the price for their actions. Over to the executive board of the Met Office and the trustees of the BBC…" http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/the...And this: "The Met Office has embarked on an urgent exercise to bolster the reputation of climate-change science after the furore over stolen e-mails." http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/10/the-met-offi...Mystic Met indeed.
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turbobloke
55,489 posts
129 months
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Same winter, same month of issue iirc, different forecast - can we trust people who do this? It's not climate change it's forecasting.  
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IainT
8,022 posts
107 months
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turbobloke said: Same winter, same month of issue, different forecast - can we trust people who do this? It's not climate change it's forecasting. One's a forecast of temperature and the other a forecast of 'probability of warmer than average' temps. Both with different scales (one degrees C, the other %) different granularities and different spatial resolutions. Why on earth would/should they look the same?
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turbobloke
55,489 posts
129 months
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The different scales and colour codes are hardly an explanation of two different forecasts, in that they are seemingly claimed by the BBC and Mystic Met, not just me, to refer to two different forecasts of the same winter - even within the implications of different representations. One went to the government and was allegedly 'secret' while the other was public. The charts posted were a follow-on from the articles linked to earlier. The Beeb's and Mystic Met's explanation for this fiasco beggars belief. Have another read of the linked articles and others on this theme, in paricular this extract from a Mystic Met-Government e-mail eschange. The Met Office seasonal outlook for the period November to January is showing no clear signals for the winter.So, what did Mystic Met actually forecast for the 2010/11 winter...'no clear signals'. Every episode in this sorry saga is here, with more besides: http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/met...If this fills you with confidence in what Mystic Met puts out, not to mention what the Beeb (one of their top customers) says about it, I don't envy you!
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turbobloke
55,489 posts
129 months
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We need to remember that the whole fiasco played out because the public forecast of a mild winter was wrong, at which point the Met Office and the Beeb apparently said 'not so' and that there was in fact a secret cold winter forecast that was accurate. The nature of the forecasts shown as being different in their nature as well as differente in their represenetation is a claim by the Met Office and the Beeb, not (just) me. It was apparently an attempt to rescue the Met Office's reputation. Did it work for anyone?
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TheHeretic
68,024 posts
124 months
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I have someone called @Askgerbil who seems to think that historical trends, etc, do not matter, in relation to the MWP. This person is attempting to tell me I'm illogical! 
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Apache
38,246 posts
153 months
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TheHeretic said: I have someone called @Askgerbil who seems to think that historical trends, etc, do not matter, in relation to the MWP. This person is attempting to tell me I'm illogical! He's probably right actually as trends can be made to suit depending upon where they begin and start. They are also hugely suspect due to the widely varying methods of measurement and interpretation.
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TheHeretic
68,024 posts
124 months
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Apache said: He's probably right actually as trends can be made to suit depending upon where they begin and start. They are also hugely suspect due to the widely varying methods of measurement and interpretation. No... he is not. The issue isn't cherry picking. The issue is that it doesn't matter if the MWP period was global or not. It makes no odds otherwise. To use his phrase "Logic error: An earthquake causes a landslide in 1800. A TNT blast causes a landslide in 2000. 1800 event tells us NOTHING.". It seems to him that it doesn't matter what happened in the past, temperature wise, as the current one is man made.. regardless, it has a huge effect on what the 'norm' is in recent historical past. "Unprecedented" is a word often used.
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Apache
38,246 posts
153 months
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TheHeretic said: Apache said: He's probably right actually as trends can be made to suit depending upon where they begin and start. They are also hugely suspect due to the widely varying methods of measurement and interpretation. No... he is not. The issue isn't cherry picking. The issue is that it doesn't matter if the MWP period was global or not. It makes no odds otherwise. To use his phrase "Logic error: An earthquake causes a landslide in 1800. A TNT blast causes a landslide in 2000. 1800 event tells us NOTHING.". It seems to him that it doesn't matter what happened in the past, temperature wise, as the current one is man made.. regardless, it has a huge effect on what the 'norm' is in recent historical past. "Unprecedented" is a word often used. I'm only responding with the information available, ie you didn't state in what context he made that remark. To say that the 'current one is man made' is absurd and meaningless because there is nothing untoward about it in the first place and if there was there is no correlation with man in any measurement currently (and historically) available anyway
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thinfourth2
23,582 posts
73 months
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Hold the front page CO2 ended the last ice age http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-1761...Well thats me convinced But one must ask knowing the following facts to be true Fact 1 The dominant species at this time was wooly mammoths Fact 2 CO2 exclusively comes from rangerovers Then i must ask How does a wooly mammoth drive a range rover, they don't have opposable thumbs
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TheHeretic
68,024 posts
124 months
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Their timeline is the most interesting part. Milanovich cycles increase energy reaching the northern hemisphere, which melts a whole bunch of ice, which releases loads of freshwater, which is heated at the equator, which then releases a whole pile of CO2...
And co2 is the cause? Are they serious? Sounds to me like it is a result of temp change, rather than the other way round, but what do I know. It also suggests that anywhere near to 260ppm and we will all die an icy death, so best keep those emissions up in the 350+ range, for the sake of the children.
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turbobloke
55,489 posts
129 months
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The (time) resolution available isn't conclusive. The cause and effect aspect is faith. Given that carbon dioxide changes always follow temperature changes where high levels of (time) resolution are available in the data, meaning that carbon dioxide levels are an effect of climate change not a cause, this is YMCA - yesterdays myths cooked again. Not to mention the lack of opposable thumbs in mammoths  Where the article from the ever faithful Black has a chart complete with highlight circle claiming to show causality via a claimed lag of temperature to tax gas, it cherry picks a change in trend in one dataset that has no corresponding change in trend in the other, amidst a variety of trend changes over various timescales where you could pick your start and end times to get the result you want. Immediately prior to the claimed causal event, carbon dioxide levels fell for about a thousand years while the global temperature trend remained unchanged and was rising in spite of falling levels of the evil gas. Same old hand waving. Black et al should consult TheHeretic for a better understanding of what's going on 
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zbc
114 posts
20 months
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thinfourth2 said: Then i must ask
How does a wooly mammoth drive a range rover, they don't have opposable thumbs Motability
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odyssey2200
17,470 posts
78 months
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