Met Office covers itself in more bonuses

We rather hope that some media hack who is vaguely displaying signs of consciousness will seek out Met Office Chief Executive John Hirst and take the opportunity to ask this richly remunerated, teflon coated individual his definition of a performance related bonus.

For it seems that when it comes to the Met Office, performance related bonuses do not require performance to be good or even adequate.

It is utterly incredible, and defies both logic and reason, that after the manifest failures of the Met Office over its winter forecast those in senior positions will be awarded payments over and above their salaries.  The Met Office claimed it forecasted the bitterly cold early winter only didn’t tell the public, yet Freedom of Information requests by this blog and fellow blogger Katabasis drew out the forecast provided to the Government which proved to be statistically meaningless.

Thereafter this blog then exposed of the Met Office’s subsequent efforts to deceive the public and distort information sought by MPs in Parliament over that forecast.  We also discovered that the Met Office’s seasonal forecasts were only renamed and relocated rather than discontinued, as evidenced by its own Board Minutes.  Taken together these issues demonstrated it is an organisation beset by poor standards that is more concerned with pursuing agendas and absorbing public money than its core activity – forecasting the weather.

The Sunday Express, whose sister title the Daily Express was handed the Met Office story and supporting documentary evidence on a plate but failed to run with it, highlights that the plan to pay bonuses comes just days after the departments latest high profile forecasting failure.  This concerns the day of the Royal Wedding and in the story our friend Piers Corbyn gets a positive mention for his accuracy once again.

Right up to 29th April the Met Office was forecasting heavy showers that would dampen the day and affect thousands of street parties.  Many people who ventured to London took wet weather gear with them while many more planned indoor celebrations due to the forecast. Those who ignored the threat of rain were treated to a mild day with plenty of sunshine, as observed by a television audience of hundreds of millions around the world.

While the Met Office compounds its failure to cover itself in glory when it comes to weather forecasting it seems to have no problem covering itself in unjustifiable bonuses and telling porkies.  Just like last year…

Piers Corbyn shreds Met Office evidence to Transport Committee

Following on from the post about the written evidence submitted to the Transport Select Committee about the preparedness (or otherwise) for the early winter weather in December, Piers Corbyn has a post on his WeatherAction site that is required reading.

In addition to providing some useful documents for readers to download, Piers lambasts the Met Office’s written evidence, declaring:

THE MET OFFICE’s submission is, I would say: a Mubarak-style, bunkerish, self-serving, denial of reality

It’s hard to disagree. Read it all here.

Not the sort of Spring and Summer the warmists want

Weather Action’s Piers Corbyn has predicted in his news bulletin that 2011 is to be another year of weather extremes:

Solar-lunar driven major jet stream blocking will continue through January and the whole of 2011 giving more extreme cold and snowy / blizzardy spells in parts of USA, Britain and Europe though January continuing into February and then not the sort of Spring and Summer the warmists want.

We don’t know what the Met Office thinks will happen beyond May. March, April and May are rated as having 40-60% probability of experiencing above average temperatures based on December’s published probability map for Europe (saved for future reference) – in other words a coin toss. Although the MO seems rather confident that the eastern Mediterranean will be warmer than usual during those months.

Bastardi and Corbyn reply

Following on from the blog post yesterday about 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…

AM emailed respected meterology experts Joe Bastardi and Piers Corbyn to ask them what supercomputing technology they employ that helps them to generate forecasts that are consistently more accurate than those of the Met Office.

Both gentlemen, who enjoy an excellent track record for their forecasting accuracy, have very kindly replied and their answers are published in full below:

Joe Bastardi said:

I look at the models, and I do use them as input to the forecast with many other factors. However they are not Gods, and to make the excuse we need a bigger computer when in reality all they do is arrive at a solution … right or wrong … faster, and have nothing factored in  about past weather events, or natural cycles, or some of the other things Piers and I  use, seems to me to be  blaming the model and then saying you need more of what failed in the first place.

If the Physics is not right, then forget it. Modeling for instance, relying on greenhouse gasses to warm the atmosphere will come out at a warmer  solution. The UKMET model now has suddenly flipped to a cool solution across much of the world for the coming months, but well after it was obvious to us that major cooling  was going to occur ( last March I said 2011 would try to return to near normal, similar to the La Nina of the late 90s and the recent one… That is because I knew before the computer a major La Nina was coming on and said so in February.. and based the high  total number of hurricanes  for the season on the La Nina and the very warm tropical atlantic at the time ..which has cooled since then, btw).

As someone who has no access to public funds, or grants, well I don’t have the computer they do.

Which is interesting since I think we can agree since I joined this little forecasting battle the past  3 years,  I have hit the cold  over in Europe. Part of the reason is the model and computer has a warm bias since the PDO ( Pacific Decadol Oscillation flipped to cool). Now I wonder why that would be?

And what will happen when the Atlantic turns cold?  Throw in solar cycles, and increased arctic or tropical volcanic activity… no computer is going to handle that.

Computer models are tools to get an answer, but not the answer. There is the difference. These folks have not had the kind of forecasting experience that Piers and I have,  so they put all this faith in models. We use models, but only as  the icing on the cake so to speak.  While both of us may have our favorite  major climate driver,  The ability to see all the players on the field is enhanced when one does not rely on the computer. A good forecaster has to have a visual idea of what a pattern should look like BEFORE HE BRINGS IN THE COMPUTER MODELS, and then have the models  confirm or question  his conclusion.. much like team mates challenge each other in competition.

To simply use the model as the number one input to ones forecast.. well then what is the need for the forecaster?  Maybe that is what this is all about, getting rid of any  human touch to the weather, and convincing the public its so. Either that, or saying. I give up, I cant do it, so I will let the model  do it. Well I  not cut from the cloth that backs away at challenges  in things I was made to do, one of them forecast the weather, so I do not become a puppet of models, but instead will accept the model as a team-mate.. another source of input.  But that is all it is.

A forecast  for instance, for winter starts way in advance,  looking at  many years  of  past weather to understand similarities to where  we are now  UNDERSTANDING THE MAJOR PHYSICAL NATURAL DRIVERS  that are affecting the pattern and also understanding  where we are in the climate cycle and not assuming that the earth is headed in one direction.

Such open mindedness and the crucible of capitalism and competition, where if not right enough, Piers and I  will get fired,  makes a bigger difference than just saying I need more money for a bigger computer so I can rely on it.

Funny but true, a video I did back in March showed 11 year cycle forecasts for the summer indicating a warm US summer, while NOAAs  computer had it cool for summer  Guess what one was right.  The  11 year cycle forecast.

Last Spring, the computer had a very warm winter for Alaska this winter, which I  hammered. Well guess what is going on.

The UKMET model had a warm winter this winter.  Well.

It’s not the computer, it’s the limits of the computer in  trying to adjust to what only men can understand and use. I dont think you need more money to arrive at the wrong answer faster. Should put it into fighting hunger, or giving men a chance to be free enough to dream and pursue that dream… much better causes in my opinion.

Piers Corbyn said:

My answer to What supercomputers do I use? is:

W A I T  F O R  I T…………..

N
O
N
E

And before someone goes looking for the ‘NONE’ computer company I mean: We do not use ANY Supercomputer we use P H Y S I C S.

In WeatherAction my Solar Lunar Action Technique (SLAT) does involve a number of equations and theoretical concepts (Weather action indicators) and calculations which are all performed on a pretty low level PC.The key thing to understand is that all weather circulation patterns have near enough happened before; the key is to find out when and how this time around they will be not quite the same as before.

I explained at some length HOW & WHY my technique(s) work at our WeatherAction Climate Fools Day conference in October 2009 held at Imperial College London. The Warmists were explicitly invited and given a slot to speak but none came.

A video of one of my invites, made direct to John Ackers of Friends of The Earth live on Sky news in October 2009, is linked below. Looking at it now I find it even more hilarious than at the time (when we had ’50 days left to save the Planet’) and suggest readers have a look and a laugh (no mention of ‘cold is warm’ here!!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6zSLQA-BrY

The GWers claim that we haven’t explained what we do. That is untrue. The truth is they don’t want to know and don’t want anyone else to know {Recall Phil Jones CRU E-mails described me as The MAIN enemy on the Europe side of the Atlantic and that he and his mates would do everything in their power to prevent the likes of me ever getting anything into print}. I thank blogs such as this which have enabled me and Bastardi and loads of others to break partly through the Greenwash cult.

I say our technique(s) plural because they are evolving and now on Solar Lunar Action Technique – SLAT5b, which supersedes our SWT (Solar Weather Technique). What I do is very different from Bastardi who is clearly also skilled especially for USA. Nevertheless his approach is more Earth-based, not so far ahead and less skilled and much less detailed [Of course we are not always right but I would just like to mention Xmas Day and the nights before and after in the UK were EXTREMELY COLD as we predicted from during November when I placed some successful bets on the matter of snow, contrary to his ‘It will turn mild’ prognoses].

A few links here explain key ideas of what I do –

1. VIDEO of why it (SWT/SLAT) works – Imperial college Oct 2009 –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMQNrP1NhVM

2. Presentation similar to as presented at Climate Fools day 2010 in Parliament:
http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=222&c=1

3. “World cooling has ….” –
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3307&linkbox=true&position=3

On supercomputers and the The Met Office I would say that no amount of spending on their approach will ever produce better forecasts in any forecasting more than 3 days ahead. Standard Meteorology has reached the end of its potential. It can go no further. What we do is infinitely more skilled (since they have zero skill) in any long range forecasting. Let’s be clear no amount of investment in wax technology will ever produce a light bulb. For a small fraction of the extra money they want to waste on supercomputers we could reliably forecast extreme events and general weather development details across the WORLD many months ahead.

Happy 1 1 11 – see my WeatherAction new Year message –
http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=290&c=5

Piers Corbyn
Msc (astrophysics), ARCS FRAS FRMetS
MD WeatherAction.com long range weather & climate forecasters

Please note: If you’re a blogger or journalist and wish to quote from either response, please provide a link back to this post so your readers can see the comments in their full context and avoid any misunderstanding – it’s only proper.

There is clearly an overwhelming case here for challenging the Met Office robustly about its assertion that it requires additional huge sums of money to purchase more supercomputing technology. The question is, will those who control our tax pounds undertake that challenge and stop our money being spent wastefully? Bastardi and Corbyn’s replies demonstrate that the fundamental difference between the Met Office and those meterologists who forecast with much greater accuracy is a matter of technique and approach rather than technology and processing power. The politicians need to understand this.

I’m extremely grateful to Joe and Piers for taking the time late on New Year’s Day to consider the question posed on this blog and write such detailed replies so quickly. Thank you gentlemen.

The great weather forecasting match up

Over at Real Science, Steven Goddard says there are only two real players in the long range weather forecasting profession – Joe Bastardi and Piers Corbyn.

The Met Office’s determination to put its global warming ideology before accurate forecasting has long since ruled it out as a serious player in meterology. As a result more articles like this are appearing as the Met Office desperately spins the line that it didn’t issue a seasonal forecast. Perhaps not in name, but it certainly used its infamous, lavishly taxpayer funded computer models to predict the temperatures this winter and were completely wrong – again.

Bastardi and Corbyn have different outlooks for the weather after the holiday period. As Steven says his understanding is that, ‘Joe is forecasting milder European weather after Christmas, and Piers isn’t’. So which of these long range forecasting titans will be more accurate? It’s Joe vs Piers and readers are being invited to share their thoughts in the comments. The most amusing comment so far is this from ‘suyts’:

I take Joe, but probably because I’m really hoping for a warm turn so we can hear all of the alarmists stutter and say they didn’t mean warming was causing cold and that we misunderstood.

Why not have a punt? Enjoy!