This is a potentially huge story with a nasty smell of conspiracy about it. There appears to be a concerted effort to whitewash serious failings at the Met Office, with the assistance of a senior climate change propagandist at the BBC who is fully bought in to the Met Office’s warmist agenda.
The Telegraph reports today that: ‘The Met Office knew that Britain was facing an early and exceptionally cold winter but failed to warn the public, hampering preparations for some of the coldest weather on record.’ The article goes on to say:
In October the forecaster privately warned the Government – with whom it has a contract – that Britain was likely to face an extremely cold winter.
It kept the prediction secret, however, after facing severe criticism over the accuracy of its long-term forecasts.
October? That is the same month that this temperature probability map was published – for public consumption:
There is absolutely no logical or rational basis for the Met Office publishing the probability map above, yet ‘secretly’ telling the government a completely different story. The Met Office not only published the map, it had meterologists speaking publicly about the map and setting an expectation of a very high probability of warmer than average winter, as I will explain…
It is bad enough that this story is being spun at all because it completely torpedos any remaining credibility the Met Office has. But there is another important dimension to this that raises serious question marks about the story, and that is the involvement of the Met Office’s fellow warmist traveller, Roger Harrabin, environment analyst at the BBC and far from impartial commentator on climate change matters. The language used by Harrabin, who is quoted in the Telegraph article from comments he made to the Radio Times, smacks of a concerted attempt to muddy the water, shift attention from the central issue and prepare the way for the BBC to give the Met Office a clean bill of health at a future date. Consider:
The trouble is that we simply don’t know how much to trust the Met Office. How often does it get the weather right and wrong. And we don’t know how it compares with other, independent forecasters.
Can we rely on them if we are planning a garden party at the weekend? Or want to know if we should take a brolly with us tomorrow? Or planning a holiday next week?
In a few year’s time hopefully we’ll all have a better idea of whom to trust. By then the Met Office might have recovered enough confidence to share with us its winter prediction of whether to buy a plane ticket or a toboggan.
In the first paragraph Harrabin is paving the way for a BBC comparison of the Met Office with independent forecasters. This despite Piers Corbyn being banned from placing bets on long range weather forecasts because he kept beating the bookie with odds set by the Met Office itself. There is also substantial evidence of independent forecasters such as Corbyn, Joe Bastardi and others winning business from clients who had dispensed with the Met Office offering due to poor accuracy.
The language in the second paragraph is telling. The central issue has been the Met Office failings in seasonal and long range forecasting. Harrabin however selects examples of short range forecasting, where the Met Office is not as weak simply because the weather patterns are already upon us and therefore much easier to forecast. However, there is even a question mark over that ‘nowcasting’ as Bournemouth would happily testify.
The third paragraph is exactly what I would write if I was trying to buy the Met Office some breathing space. This is a standard defensive communications technique.
- Give people the false impression there is no existing evidence with which to make a comparison and so suspend the onslaught
- Give people the false impression that forming a judgement now would be unreasonable
- Set an expectation that it will take a few years to establish whether or not there is actually an issue with the Met Office’s forecasting
Harrabin’s words are not what one would hear from an impartial and unbiased observer. They are the words of someone who is trying to head off a critical appraisal. This assessment is validated by the next section of Harrabin’s comments:
Why didn’t the Met Office tell us that Greenland was about to swap weather with Godalming? The truth is it [The Met Office] did suspect we were in for an exceptionally cold early winter, and told the Cabinet Office so in October. But we weren’t let in on the secret. “The reason? The Met Office no longer publishes its seasonal forecasts because of the ridicule it suffered for predicting a barbecue summer in 2009 – the summer that campers floated around in their tents.
This is a masterclass in the selective use of language. Harrabin is not saying ‘the Met Office claims’ or ‘people suggest’. He actually declares that it is the ‘truth’ that the Met Office suspected we would have an exceptionally cold early winter. This is almost subliminal. Believe. It’s true. Harrabin seems to be reverting to Neurolinguistic programming in order to assist the Met Office.
Nowhere is there any proper examination of the startling claim that the Met Office correctly predicted the cold winter and kept it ‘secret’. The reader is enjoined to accept it because Harrabin says it is so. Is this what a journalist should be doing and does this stand up to scrutiny?
If the government was truly in receipt of this secret forecast, why was no action taken to increase the stock of spreading salt, given local authorities had stockpiled less salt than last year? Is the Met Office actually saying the government was so determined to keep a weather forecast to shield the Met Office from ridicule that it deliberately withheld information needed by the local authorities? The implications are huge. It would be a national scandal that would undermine the government.
By way of further evidence about the lack of preparation following the Met Office’s ‘secret’ forecast to government, we need look only at the budget for the Winter Front allowance. If the government knew that the cold snap was coming as per the Met Office line, why were no steps taken to adjust the budget? The budget for the whole 2010-11 winter has already been exhausted and we are only just into January. In addition, the £40m Winter Fuel Payment budget has also been wiped out with over £100m of extra benefit payments made. Again, why no pre-adjustment to the budget? The point here? Is the government guilty of a dereliction of its duty to the UK’s most vulnerable citizens despite being in receipt of ‘secret’ information from its own meterological department stating that it would be exceptionally cold?
Another question to ask yourself is this: Does it seem reasonable or probable that the publicly funded meterology department of the UK provided the government with a secret forecast about exceptional cold, at the same time it was publishing the opposite forecast to the public, but did so because it was previously ridiculed for getting seasonal forecasts wrong? And that the government conspired to keep it secret, took no action to prepare to keep the highways clear and maintain a safe driving environment and let its Winter Fuel Allowance budget be used up with only a fraction of the winter gone?
Where is the logic in the Met Office thinking it would avoid ridicule by telling the public on its own website that there was a circa 80% probability of a warmer than average winter if it was actually predicting the exceptional cold as it claims to have told the government? This nonsensical merry-go-round is compounded by the final word in the Telegraph piece where a Met Office spokesman says:
In late October we informed the Cabinet office that there were early indications of a cold start to winter. Following public research we were told that a monthly outlook would be of more use which is why we now have the 6-15 day and 16-30 day forecast on our website.
Is it not curious that there is no mention of the temperature map above which was (and still is) on the Met Office website? Or that there is no acknowledgment that:
Helen Chivers, Met Office forecaster, insisted the temperature map [now not referred to] takes into account the influence of climate factors such as El Nino and La Nina – five-yearly climatic patterns that affect the weather – but admits this is only a “start point” for a seasonal forecast. She said: “The map shows probabilities of temperatures in months ahead compared to average temperatures over a 30-year period.
The stench of deceit surrounding the Met Office, it’s disgraceful self serving effort to mislead the public and apparent attempt by a publicly funded BBC journalist to distort the facts is overpowering. There now needs to be an independent inquiry into this whole matter. A Freedom of Information request is being submitted to ask for this secret October forecast.
Autonomous Mind 
So the Met Office actually got the forecast right but didn’t tell anyone? Oh Yes – We all believe that don’t we.
All Pigs Fuelled and Ready to Fly……..
Am I now going to have to go to Wikileaks to get forecasts?
The map shows probabilities of temperatures in months ahead compared to average temperatures over a 30-year period.
As long as the slope of the temperature graph remains positive in accordance to CAGW theory. If there is a natural cyclical change that means that the graph goes negative then the prediction is so far from the mark that they may as well wet their fingers and stick them up into the air.
This all boils down to belief rather than science, we are paying for a politically biased organisation to taint the science that everyday people are relying upon for their own safety and welbeing, it’s an utter disgrace and heads should roll.
Interesting to compare this story with the MO quote given in your earlier piece about Bastardi and Corbyn:
“the Met Office’s Julia Slingo claiming the recent ‘freak weather’ (aka a cold winter) could have been predicted if only the Met Office had more supercomputing power…”
Which rather implies that they didn’t see it coming – well, not until it actually arrived at the end of November. It would be interesting to see the Cabinet papers…
Always follow the money. The Met Office and it’s Climate Change centre of “excellence” was and is still being groomed for full privatisation. Those heading the various sections then stand to become millionaires via salary excesses, share options and bonuses. However they are evermore a laughing stock and the book value is plummeting. Ergo this pathetic attempt to pump up it’s credibility. Maybe the hot summer ahead and the drought in Northern Europe we are due will give the warmists a Viagra period?
Great post AM. I hope you will keep at this bone, I think it might have a lot of meat on it!
The reason for the cover-up is quite clear surely?
The Met Office head honcho’s New Year ‘Honours’ award would have been tainted at the time and he would probably have been embarrassed. Artivcles might have been written that connected him with the debacle in perpetuity.
A few days grace and now there are unlikely to be any links to articles about this matter should anyone search directly for references to the dates for New Year honours realted articles.
The more time passes, and the older I get, the more it seems that all matters of ‘public interest’ and ‘politics’ have little to do with public matters and a lot to do with massaging egos.
Also from the telegraph article;
Piers Corbyn, the owner of WeatherAction, an independent forecaster, said: “This is a step in the right direction. The Met Office has got it repeatedly and yet it remains the public service forecaster. There needs to be greater competition. I hope this will encourage but it is vital that the assessors and their measurements are independent and objective.”
In the interest of balance, as they say, they quote a leading sceptical astrophysicist. Then snip two words or phrases making the quote meaningless. Indeed, saying the MO got it, rather than got it wrong, subliminally alters the message.
James P makes the key point. Slingo unambiguously said the Met Office couldn’t make such a forecast without an even bigger computer.
Yet now Harrabin claims they did make precisely this kind of forecast.
They can’t have it both ways.
This is a laughably transparent attempt to cover their tracks.
That’s a good point James P.
There seems to be 3 strands to Met Office behaviour:
Say it will get warm.
Say it will get cold.
Say ‘Send more money’.
If they say it will be warm or cold and it is – send more money so we can be even more correct more often and for further into the future.
If they say it will be warm or cold and it isn’t – send more money so we can become correct.
The privatisation angle is intriguing, Oldrightie. They’ve already got a super computer out of us. Might they now be in a hurry to get it blinged up a bit more at taxpayer’s expense so that a privatised Met Office wouldn’t have to find the money?
What is happening is quite straightforward, and hardly requires any conspiracy theory beyond normal human mendacity.
1 – the Met Office make long-range winter forecasts. These are beyond the state of the art to make accurately, so they simply code in their global warming assumptions. Unsurprisingly, these all predict warming….
2 – as time progresses, the medium-range winter forecasts become possible. These probably predict unsettled weather, and, I am sure, are the subject of a lot of internal argument. Sometimes these surface publicly….
3 – Eventually short-term winter forecasts are possible. Here you can see the cold and snow coming, so they become quite accurate, and are publicised a few days before the event…
So, depending on the time you select, the Met Office has forecast heat, cold, or anything in between. Then their supporters can simply pick the appropriate prediction for the weather that happened. The Met Office have been quite clever in claiming that they will not make long-term forecasts while releasing various ‘projections’ – they now get the best of all worlds.
The wording on the Quarmby audit report is interesting. In Whitehall-speak it implies that the Met Office are playing this game, and that therefore their forecasts are no longer of much value…..
James P – a word of caution, the piece you quote is my words. But it would be fair to say they reflect the thrust of what Slingo was saying in the Nature interview.
Either the Cabinet Office or UKMO are NOT going to come out of this unscathed / undiminished.
Will the Cabinet Office back them up ?
If the Cabinet Office confirm UKMO warning why didn’t they act? – because they don’t believe in the competence of their forecasts? – so why should they believe in global warming etc?
It seems under the circumstances that UKMO, to preserve what’s left of their dignity should have simply kept quiet.
Don’t squander the gift.
Conspiracy seems to be a very apt word here AM, even though the word has been brought into disrepute.
I looked at the report in the Telegraph early this morning and intended to post…. Lo and behold, no comments section?
I too saw the absence of a comments section in in the Telegraph article and had to reach for my tinfoil hat to avoid leaping to conclusions!
Dodgy Geezer,
Is that a form of confirmation bias you are describing?
EG if there are say, three time frames, for Met winter predictions – long, medium and short range given out at different points of the year – and each one says something different. Then when the winter comes around and one of the predictions happens to be correct they say ‘We told you it would happen’ without acknowledging that they made other predictions that didn’t come true.
This would make them charlatans in my book, playing a very basic game of chance and misdirection.
@Tom…
But you realised it was already in place.
@right_writes
yep, must remember to put some clothes on.
It’s an age thing they tell me.
A French blogger has followed the seasonal predictions of 17 sources over the past 4 years, public agencies or amateur meteorologist. Predictions and how they compare to observations are compiled here (Excel spreadsheet): http://la.climatologie.free.fr/prevision-saisoniere.xls
On tab 2 (prévisions saisionnières), the Met Office has stubbornly predicted a HOT december 2010, 1°C above normal. Up until november, 16 sources over 17 predicted a cold december, and the only one which persisted in predicting a hot december is… the Met Office.
On tab 4 (calcul des erreurs), sheet bottom, a summary of performance is established based on predictions’ hit or miss of 3 targets: hot, normal or cold. And the Met Office, at 43% miss/hit ratio is worse than many amateur sources ! If there must be some consolation, it’s still less worse than Meteo France’s performance, which at 34% is no better than dice playing.
So when Harrabin says “there is no way to compare the Met Office with other forecasters”, it’s either lazzy ignorance or lie or both. If the Met Office doesn’t want others to know it’s performance (rather lack of) in predicting seasonal weather, it’s because it’s abysmal, like many public agencies’.
As an aside, Meteo France, which like the Met Office, is a propaganda arm, but on the French side for the climate-nuclear-alarmist industry (its CEO, François Jacq, is a sustainable development bureaucrat and former head of French nuclear control agency ANDRA !), has been clever in communicating its abysmal science : it deletes all archives of its past seasonal forecast, there is none of them on Meteo France’s websites, only hindcast or “nowcast”. Don’t want to show incovenient facts ? burn the book.
Great spot Jean. Thanks for including that!
The Telegraph reports today that: ‘The Met Office knew that Britain was facing an early and exceptionally cold winter but failed to warn the public, hampering preparations for some of the coldest weather on record.’
If that could be sheeted home, it might be the start of good things.
AM
“the piece you quote is my words”
My apologies, but I’m sure you paraphrased Ms.Slingo accurately.. :-)
WRT sending money for ever-bigger computers, I rather liked Piers Corbyn’s remark that their only benefit was to arrive at the wrong answer faster. Since he frequently arrives at the right answer, often from months ahead, using a humble PC, his opinion should carry some weight. Unfortunately, government departments only take notice of advice when it is expensive…
Any inquiry into Met Office performance should perhaps have some input from James Randi.
Hi,
I’ve included a reference in my blog.
A direct link for the Met Office image is:
Ecotretas
OK! This whole climate/weather thing jas got completely out of hand.
There has to be a massive hidden adgenda here.
No Idea what the detail might be, no idea what the detail of the motives are, but there has to be huge consequences for someone bubbling under the surface.
This whole climate/weather/forecasting thing stinks to high heaven.
Who the hell has secret weather forecasts? C’mon maaann, this is adulescent school yard behaiviour by the mEt office, the BBC, and where are the government spokespeople saying “hang on a tick, we can’t find that forecasr you said you gave us”.
This will degenerate to he said/she said the dog ate my homework.
Meanwhile we have whole councils struggling to prepare for extreme cold. AND THIS WILL COST LIVES!
These self serving, slef interested centers of the universe need to get a grip.
Conveniently, the Telegraph article is no longer available on-line…….
I think this story has some legs. No hang on, wait, let me finish.
The basic story here is that the Met Office gave a forecast in confidence to uk.gov of a cold period. uk.gov did not pass this on, otherwise we would have known about it.
The conclusion the Met is hoping for is that uk.gov knew about it and did not do any extra planning or spending to cope. Given that this cold snap has cost billions of quid and a few lives then this is not good press for the government, especially one of cuts.
I can’t see the Met making this claim (even via a 3rd party) unless they have some evidence. If they do then uk.gov is in the dock. If not then the Met have declared PR war on uk.gov in which case they will lose.
So I suspect they may have some documentation, minutes, emails, memos etc. to back this up.
The article is still there as far as I can see, Dave.
Nick wrote:
“These self serving, slef interested centers of the universe need to get a grip.”
I rather fear they already have.
The Met Office has established itself in the minds of the public as a joke organisation. It’s like a teacher losing control of a class and it’s nearly impossible to recover from.
The only question the MO should be addressing is what happens when laughter turns to anger. It’s unfortunate in that respect that they have so many who are determined, as their job description requires, to raise their profile at every opportunity and make implausible excuses, rather than just shut up.
Roger Harrabin should already be in a unique position to comment on the accuracy of the various weather forecasters, not in a few years time, but now.
Back in September he set up a steering group in association with Ledds University to track the accuracy of a number of forecasters. Its trumpeted here on Paul Hudson’s weather and climate blog at the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2010/09/which-long-range-forecast-do-y.shtml
Of course the phrase “steering group” smacks a little of wanting to steer the findings in a certain direction.
So, the ball is in Harrabin’s court: given the mess of this winter’s forecasting efforts at the Met, maybe he or the steering group itself can be persuaded to release details of their findings so far. Just who is the most accurate forecaster?
It doens’t suprise me the Biased BBC and Met office are in cahoots to spin the truth…because the embers of the global warming/climate change or whatever its called this week have to be kept glowing…don;t they…
but when you think about it the Met office is either incompetent if it did forecast (quelle suprise) or clearly negligent if it didn’t forecast accurately….come to think of it, its still negligent even if it did forecast accurately and didn’t publish this, then again on reflection its obviously both incompetent and negligent…
I think I’ll stick to my weather stone that hangs on my wall outside by my patio, its more accurate than any met office forecast and hasn’t let me down yet….
An independent inquiry? I hear Muir Russell is available.
Do you think that the Met Office are:-
1) Between a rock and a hard place.
2) Up the creak without a paddle.
3) Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
4) Between Scylla an Charybdis.
5) Other
Answers on a post card please.
There’s a name for this, and I sometimes step in it when I’m at the farm….
I would place this entirely on the BBC rather than the MET!
Most Government agencies are not that stupid! Harrabin appears to be making news and it will probably come out as claiming that was a personal opinion that was taken out of context.
Even though the MET has its own problems they need to answer for, I find this beyond SNAFU for any government group!
I could be wrong!
Slingo and Pope have made some really dumb claims recently!
Roger Harrabin has played a blinder
Of course this isn’t the first that Harrabin discussed benchmarking forecasters – see here… http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9029000/9029232.stm
As for the MET’s winter forecast, there is some evidence that they were forecasting cold winter behind the scenes despite the probability map that was published.
“The Met Office don’t issue their seasonal forecast to the general public anymore, using them for internal research purposes only, but as I understand it, their forecast also suggests that the probability of a cold winter is higher than normal.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2010/10/
Lets see; prior to this article the consensus was the met office got it wrong “again” and maybe this is evidence of incompetence. But the Telegraph article claims “no the met office got it right” and did correctly predict the cold start to winter to the government but both the met office and the government chose to keep it secret not just from the public but also from the organisations with a responsbility for appropriate public planning.
This seems to me about like an accused standing up before a judge and claiming “No your honour I could not possibly have snatched the bag as I am accused of doing because I was out committing a murder at the time”.
Making a mistake is not a crime, incompetence is not a crime (although it might mean you lose your job) but deliberately withholding information with the outcome that several people die and billions of pounds of damages results could in my opinion well be considered a crime. In the case of a government why would it not be grounds for at least a vote of no confidence or even impeachment.
Is the Telegraph article trying to exonerate the met office or trying destroy both it and the government? Or is the article itself a sign of monumental short sighted incompetence?
I used to work in commercial radio but was long retired in 1996/97 when I noticed something about the frequency, intensity and scheduling of Global Warming Stories on BBC radio.
Commercial radio stations offer what are sometimes referred to as ‘ice-cream’ packages to advertisers.
It’s simple, an icecream manufacturer specifies that his adverts should only be run on a day when the temperature is above, say 21 degrees.
Likewise a central heating company might decide to only run ads when the temp was below 3 degrees.
I was living in the beautiful english countryside with my young children and trying to grow a few vegetables, plus we had never ending visitors and weekenders…so the weather was quite important to me at the time.
Darned if I didn’t notice that the global warming scare stories occurred everytime we had a warm spell of weather. (not often enough for me!)
If you woke up and the sun was shining and the leaves dancing in the breeze and the bees buzzing by, you could bet your bottom dollar there would be a global warming story on the news.
If on the other hand it was chilly, damp, grey, or cool or even cold…not a peep was to be heard about global warming.
It was one of the first things that made me question the whole AGW thing.
But that’s how clever they were, and with their media pals that’s how easy it was for them to wedge themselves into the establishment.
You’ve got to hand it to them…it worked.
You don’t want to FOI the Met Office. You want to FOI the Cabinet office.
The CO is crap at FOI requests by the way. However, I can’t see them fiddling themselves out of this.
If the CO says that they haven’t the information, the Met office is in trouble.
Two things here that could be truthful but only in part. If there was a prediction of a 60-80% chance of a warmer than usual winter, that leaves the 20-40% chance of a cold winter, so they could be simply telling the truth in part to cloud the issue, rather actually telling porkies! I’ll say no more on that score!
As for Mdms Slingo & Pope, they need to realise that having better bigger faster computers do not make predicting weather & climate better if the programme or “model” one is running is essentially flawed! Therefore the pair ought to start a new radio quiz show called “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue”!
“a Met Office spokesman says:”
– And the pretty propaganda circle completes itself. The Met Office goes for the classic maximum deniability tactic so beloved of government of using an Anonymous “Official Spokesperson”. A practice so widespread that we now ignore it despite its terrible implications for truth and accountability.
The BBC and Met Office are institutionally alarmist and not fit for purpose. Harrabin and Black are busted flushes when it comes to objectivity.
Will the fragrant Mr Harrabin tell us who briefed him from the MET Office?
@Delphius
04/01/2011 at 10:15 pm
“Back in September he set up a steering group in association with Ledds University to track the accuracy of a number of forecasters. Its trumpeted here on Paul Hudson’s weather and climate blog at the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2010/09/which-long-range-forecast-do-y.shtml”
Almost certainly the Leeds University connection PH refers to is in some way connected with …
http://www.ncas.ac.uk/
However I can see no mention of this group on their new site or the University site.
If the met office want us to believe that they made two diametrically opposite forecasts at the same time, one of which was secret, then why have they not published the secret memo, email, minutes or uncle Tom cobblers communique which informed the cabinet office. After all it isn’t secret anymore. If they did tell the cabinet office what they claim to have told them then one of their forecasts was a lie. Or are the met office allowed to choose both heads and tails when they flip their computer modelled coin?
I for one have stopped reading the BBC on-line and cannot abide their News24.
We have to remember that the met office is part of the air ministry, part of the military, which in turn is part of the government, as is the BBC.
Government policy is to endlessly promote the “global warming” LIE.
Also, does anyone remember the 1987 hurricane? The BBC/met office specifically told us there WASN’T a hurricane on the way, despite having tracked it for a week, because they “didn’t want to panic the people” – so they LIED about it.
Everything ANY government agency tells us is a LIE.
I think its time to Rise up and squash the menace we face