UK meteorology

:) I wasn't having a dig at you Chris more the way information/data is often used to daily sensationalise or exaggerate what is for the most part fairly unremarkable in our temperate oceanic climate.

I checked the online forecast before I took the dog out and it said there was a 33% chance of rain meaning I have a 66% chance of staying dry. So my odds are good, no?

 
antdad said:
:) I wasn't having a dig at you Chris more the way information/data is often used to daily sensationalise or exaggerate what is for the most part fairly unremarkable in our temperate oceanic climate.

I checked the online forecast before I took the dog out and it said there was a 33% chance of rain meaning I have a 66% chance of staying dry. So my odds are good, no?

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I think, Tony, the problem with your initial comment is that, though it reflects the standard 'myth' of that infamous summer, it's wildly inaccurate. If one compared it to shaving matters, it would be similar to the old idea that all open-comb DEs are more aggressive than safety-bar designs. What happened, as I understand it, was that the early iteration of the Met Office long-range model, which was an example of a probabilistic model rather than a deterministic one, i.e. it produces a range of possibile outcomes with a measure of prabability for each as opposed to one outcome which it calculates as the logical result of the initial (current) conditions inputted when set against known mathematical principles and equations. This output at the time gave the chances of a warmer and drier than average summer quite a bit higher than that of a cool, wet summer (which is all the specificity that seasonal models are capable of given the chaotic nature of the atmosphere and oceans), which led to the Met Office's public relations people coining the phrase "barbeque summer". Additionally, as you mentioned, the media got hold of this and changed a higher-than average chance of a fine summer into a definitive forecast, which it never was.
 
Mystic Met stopped issuing their seasonal forecasting not because there was a slight misrepresentation of the data and the chances of a fine summer were publicised as definitive but because they were got it disastrously wrong and it was the wettest in decades. New methodologies/modelling techniques usually coincide with a new supercomputer or upgrade as if they need to demonstrate the money has been well spent (like many publicly funded bodies). As it was the Met Office's own PR dept (not a ditsy TV weather girl) that termed the phrase they were utterly responsible for misleading the public considering the very changeable and uncertain nature of the data irrespective of what model was used and they had a habit of doing it...

http://www.thegwpf.com/warm-bias-met-offices-disastrous-track-record/
 
antdad said:
Mystic Met stopped issuing their seasonal forecasting not because there was a slight misrepresentation of the data and the chances of a fine summer were publicised as definitive but because they were got it disastrously wrong and it was the wettest in decades. New methodologies/modelling techniques usually coincide with a new supercomputer or upgrade as if they need to demonstrate the money has been well spent (like many publicly funded bodies). As it was the Met Office's own PR dept (not a ditsy TV weather girl) that termed the phrase they were utterly responsible for misleading the public considering the very changeable and uncertain nature of the data irrespective of what model was used and they had a habit of doing it...

http://www.thegwpf.com/warm-bias-met-offices-disastrous-track-record/
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OK, that's it - I promised early on that the Climate Change controversy wasn't going to enter this thread, and now it has. I cannot in all conscience continue with the conversation as it is now evolving having made that promise, so I won't be responding to Tony's post, and, if there's any further mentions of climate change at all, whether involving conspiracies or any other discuission of what is or isn't happening or who or what are responsible if it is, then I shall cease posting in this thread and leave it to the administration team to archive.
 
Don't give up this thread Chris. I've been reading through it and finding it very interesting. I've been away for a couple of years but remember you from the last time I was a frequent visitor to this forum.

I spent many years setting up and using met equipment. My main work involved the measurement of atmospheric trace gases, but the work involved a lot of met gear, gas analysers, data logging, remote telemetry etc. And that was before the data checking and interpretation! Keep it up.
 
Pete said:
Don't give up this thread Chris. I've been reading through it and finding it very interesting. I've been away for a couple of years but remember you from the last time I was a frequent visitor to this forum.

I spent many years setting up and using met equipment. My main work involved the measurement of atmospheric trace gases, but the work involved a lot of met gear, gas analysers, data logging, remote telemetry etc. And that was before the data checking and interpretation! Keep it up.
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That's very interesting, and thanks for your comment. I think your experience would be invaluable to this thread - I'm a semi-knowledgeable amateur at best, so I'm always interested in posts from those with relevant experience and knowledge.
 
JohnnyO said:
That reading woulda worked just fine and dandy for me Count, before I took my last PC ciurse at work and ceased thinking in binary gender terms.

JohnnyO. o/
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or...
weather%20girls.jpeg
 
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