John Walsh of The Independent wrote recently, “Some climatologists hint that the Office’s problem is political. Its computer habitually feeds in government-backed assumptions about climate change that aren’t borne out by the facts. To the Met Office, the weather’s always warmer than it really is.”
Paul Hudson of BBC Weather asks, “Could the model, seemingly with an inability to predict colder seasons, have developed a warm bias after such a long period of milder than average years?”
Dominic Lawson of the Sunday Times asserted, “A period of humility and even silence would be welcome from the Met Office, which had promised a “barbecue summer” in 2009 [it was wet and cold] and one of the ‘“warmest winters on record’ [for 2010/11 instead of the harsh cold and blizzards which have occurred].”
To cap it all off UK forecaster Piers Corbyn, noted for his skepticism on man-made warming, has become nationally famous for being right while the Met Office was wrong. For example, Corbyn predicted in November that this winter would be Britain’s coldest in 100 years. He even predicted the snowy Christmas. How does he do it: Apparently by looking at solar patterns, the number of cosmic rays hitting the earth, the Moon’s impact on streaming particles, and jet streams. Corbyn’s subscription forecasts are becoming a staple with businesses that “need to know”
They could save 10s of millions using the free Magic Eight Ball at Purdue. When I asked it if Engkand would have a warm winter it replied”Outlook Not So Good”. Well that was certainly more accurate than the MET’s forecast.
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~ssanty/cgi-bin/eightball.cgi
Did the Met Office really predict “one of the warmest winters on record”? If so, that it ended up being one of the coldest on record is testament to their cluelessness and/or warm bias.
In October the comment from MET was 80% chance that DJF would likely be warmer than normal! That was an internal memo and was not released for public consumption according to MET PR even though it appeared in public and was linked to MET!
I presume you all have read this shameful interview with the met office asking for more money. shameful as even in Cuba the interviewers usually engage in more critical thinking than this
http://bit.ly/dXCGxj
It sounds like a situation where questions are suggested by those answering the questions and questioners are advised any other questions will not be answered. It is a tactic used by Al Gore!
I read the Q A and came away thinking that Slingo is a typical administrator that has no clue what is happening and will end her term giving the same answers. We do not know with a bit of sugar on it! Send money so we can spend it and provide no results!
I posted it yesterday and have referrenced the MET rent seekers as making Madfoff look like a piker as well as having taken several other such nasty/fun jabs. My Magic 8 Ball post above is a jab at the Met rent seekers crying about a lack of petaflop power even after spending $37 million pounds on a new super computer in 2009. ;*)
Remember, the Met Office still does seasonal forecasts for the private sector and public bodies but not to the general public. I wonder what they were told? ;>)
Checked out the MET website. They issue very half assed forecasts by US standards, no temperature forecast, instead using platitudes like “frost tonight”, no specific wind forecast (“biting winds”) and plenty of weasel words for their snowfall forecasts.
It must take them 5 minutes to make their forecast. What do they do with the rest of their time?