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Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

theguardian.com

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Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#41

Post by rcthompson »

ars wrote: post #29
binarymax wrote: post #8

I've lived in the UK for the past 8 years now (having lived in various places in the East Coast USA for the rest of my life). I learned quickly that English weather forecasts are useless past the current day. It is probably due to the geographical location. East Coast US was accurate to 3 to 5 days. I just use Dark Sky[0] to get weather for the next several hours, which is mostly accurate. Given the situation with th…

> East Coast US was accurate to 3 to 5 days Interestingly in the US, the East Coast forecast is more accurate than the West Coast. This is because the trade winds in the US mostly move West to East, so most of the Weather moves in that direction as well. There are more weather sensors on land then in the Sea, so there is more data available to make a forecast with.

I would be interested to see a global heatmap of weather predictability.

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#42

Post by toyg »

DanBC wrote: post #35
toyg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another subtext: the current government is on a privatization drive. Met Office is a prime candidate for being spun off, since it's already trading. Making them lose one of their biggest customers will force them to find new ones (readying MO for full privatization) or failing that, put their finances in an unsustainable position (readying MO for full privatization or even shutdown). The BBC has many ongoing…

The met office is already a "trading fund" - which means they're required to run on a commercial basis. http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/who/management The BBC was not a huge amount of money for the met office. They have plenty of other customers. (Sky, ITV, Channel 4, are other media companies.)

Being a trading fund only means that trading receipts must account for 50% of revenues. It says nothing about where those revenues must come from, nor where continuous capital investment must come from.

Their revenues are still 85% from government contracts (bid and no-bid) according to 2013 accounts [1]. From a cursory read, I'd say it cost the government £16m in 2013 and produced £12.3m in profit, with more than £170m of revenue coming straight from governmental contracts and £30m from commercial ones.

I can see people looking forward to cutting £16m from the yearly budget and force all internal contracts to be bids, lowering that £170m bill. It makes an awful lot of sense, from a certain perspective.

[1] http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/n/e/Annual_Report-web....

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#43

Post by CydeWeys »

ars wrote: post #29
binarymax wrote: post #8

I've lived in the UK for the past 8 years now (having lived in various places in the East Coast USA for the rest of my life). I learned quickly that English weather forecasts are useless past the current day. It is probably due to the geographical location. East Coast US was accurate to 3 to 5 days. I just use Dark Sky[0] to get weather for the next several hours, which is mostly accurate. Given the situation with th…

> East Coast US was accurate to 3 to 5 days Interestingly in the US, the East Coast forecast is more accurate than the West Coast. This is because the trade winds in the US mostly move West to East, so most of the Weather moves in that direction as well. There are more weather sensors on land then in the Sea, so there is more data available to make a forecast with.

As a life-long east coaster, I never understood the frequent grouses one hears about weather reports being inaccurate. I consider them to be quite good given how much inherent chaos is in the system they're trying to predict.

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#44

Post by DanBC »

chrisseaton wrote: post #40
DanBC wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The met has bid for the contract, and lost the bid. The BBC and the met have both independantly confirmed tha. The met office isn't going to be providing weather data to the BBC. Some of the staff (the presenters tended to be real meteorologists workig for the met office) might transfer over; severe weather stuff is still going to come from the met office; the Shipping Forecast is not a met office thing so should be…

> the Shipping Forecast is not a met office thing Isn't it? It always starts with 'And now the shipping forecast issued by the Met Office, on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, at...'

Ah, yes. Sorry.

The met office provide the data to the Maritime and Coastguard agency, who then provide that to the BBC. The presenters are BBC staff, not Met Office staff. So there's no change to the Shipping Forecast.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/1181929...

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#45

Post by egwor »

simonswords82 wrote: post #27

I'm a techie and I've been using the Met Office service more recently as part of obtaining my private pilots license. Before I get to their ability to forecast correctly I need to say that their tech appears disorganised to say the least. Check out this garbage: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/aviation/ga . Specifically the text under General Aviation services. They attempted to release a new version of the General Aviat…

Have you tried accu weather? I typically find them to be most accurate, and don't bother with the bbc's.

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#46

Post by simonswords82 »

egwor wrote: post #45
simonswords82 wrote: post #27

I'm a techie and I've been using the Met Office service more recently as part of obtaining my private pilots license. Before I get to their ability to forecast correctly I need to say that their tech appears disorganised to say the least. Check out this garbage: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/aviation/ga . Specifically the text under General Aviation services. They attempted to release a new version of the General Aviat…

Have you tried accu weather? I typically find them to be most accurate, and don't bother with the bbc's.

No I haven't I'll definitely give them a try. Thanks :)

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#47

Post by SixSigma »

Here's my prediction:

30% chance of more than 1mm of rain tomorrow.

Just like every other day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_the_United_Kingdom

    Month 	Jan 	Feb 	Mar 	Apr 	May 	Jun 	Jul 	Aug 	Sep 	Oct 	Nov 	Dec 	
    Rainfall ≥ 1 mm 
    days 	13.2 	10.4 	11.5 	10.4 	9.9 	9.6 	9.5 	9.9 	9.9 	12.6 	13.1 	12.7

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#48

Post by velik_m »

ars wrote: post #29
binarymax wrote: post #8

I've lived in the UK for the past 8 years now (having lived in various places in the East Coast USA for the rest of my life). I learned quickly that English weather forecasts are useless past the current day. It is probably due to the geographical location. East Coast US was accurate to 3 to 5 days. I just use Dark Sky[0] to get weather for the next several hours, which is mostly accurate. Given the situation with th…

> East Coast US was accurate to 3 to 5 days Interestingly in the US, the East Coast forecast is more accurate than the West Coast. This is because the trade winds in the US mostly move West to East, so most of the Weather moves in that direction as well. There are more weather sensors on land then in the Sea, so there is more data available to make a forecast with.

It's not just about the number of sensors. The clouds form over the sea. Predicting when and where those clouds will form is much harder than predicting when and where those clouds will move.

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#49

Post by ars »

velik_m wrote: post #48
ars wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> East Coast US was accurate to 3 to 5 days Interestingly in the US, the East Coast forecast is more accurate than the West Coast. This is because the trade winds in the US mostly move West to East, so most of the Weather moves in that direction as well. There are more weather sensors on land then in the Sea, so there is more data available to make a forecast with.

It's not just about the number of sensors. The clouds form over the sea. Predicting when and where those clouds will form is much harder than predicting when and where those clouds will move.

Clouds form over land too.

When warm wet air meets cool air you get clouds. The goal is being able to measure the humidity and temperature of those colliding air masses.

Re: Met Office loses BBC weather forecasting contract after 93 years

#50

Post by sago »

I couldn't find anywhere that said the BBC were dropping the Met Office. Is this FUD / standard media hype? From what I gathered the BBC has decided to put forecasting out to tender. To which, the Met Office is very welcome to bid. It may end up meaning that the Met Office is gone, but not necessarily.

So while the Guardian headline is strictly true, some bits of the report make it sound like it is a done deal.

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