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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

#61

Post by megablast »

dtf wrote: post #55

Not sure if available worldwide, but there was a very interesting Radio 4 program recently, "What's the Point of The Met Office?", asking all sorts of awkward questions of this venerable institution. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06418l5 Of particular interest is the Met Office's constant demand for bigger more expensive computers, and its recent moves into the more politically contentious territory of climate cha…

> Of particular interest is the Met Office's constant demand for bigger more expensive computers, and its recent moves into the more politically contentious territory of climate change policy.

I am confused at why this is contentious, this is exactly what I would expect them to do?

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

#62

Post by 001sky »

ars wrote: post #49
velik_m wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One needs to account for relative humidity, which the ocean provides. Much of the US landmass between the pacific crestline and the rocky mountains is arid desert (from the canadian border to mexico). Second, there exist ocean-specific dynamics like el-nino, which don't really have an overland anolog.

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

#63

Post by justincormack »

megablast wrote: post #61
dtf wrote: post #55

Not sure if available worldwide, but there was a very interesting Radio 4 program recently, "What's the Point of The Met Office?", asking all sorts of awkward questions of this venerable institution. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06418l5 Of particular interest is the Met Office's constant demand for bigger more expensive computers, and its recent moves into the more politically contentious territory of climate cha…

> Of particular interest is the Met Office's constant demand for bigger more expensive computers, and its recent moves into the more politically contentious territory of climate change policy. I am confused at why this is contentious, this is exactly what I would expect them to do?

Its not contentious. The program was by an anti science climate change denier and was a total pile of shite.

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

#64

Post by mikekchar »

tedajax wrote: post #4
rikkus wrote: post #3

I half-jokingly tell people that if they get their forecast from the BBC (via the Met), they should expect the inverse weather. I wonder if the BBC has checked the quality of the forecasts based on what actually happens? I use AccuWeather and the Aix Weather Widget (for Android) because they're nearly always right (where I live, at least) - and gives me much more useful information. For example, I can't translate the…

I actually learned that the rain percentage is not the percentage chance that it will rain but is in fact the percentage of the coverage area that they will expect to get rain. So 50% rain meaning no rain at all or rain for the whole day is entirely reasonable.

Not quite:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ffc/?n=pop

Interesting that it only measures the chance of "measurable rainfall" and does not attempt to predict the duration of the rain.

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

#65

Post by Asbostos »

noir_lord wrote: post #33

Next up, Privatisation of the Met Office then. Shame as while the BBC websites presentation of the data is pretty poor the MET provide open data feeds (hard to see that continuing if they are privatised) of 3 hourly forecasts out to 5 days for 5000 locations that are considerably more accurate and detailed. http://i.imgur.com/vuCklmn.png is their example usage of the data.

That sounds like a slippery slope argument. You might as well worry about the privatization of the NHS next. With this type of approach, arguments degenerate into political partisan rhetoric and achieve nothing.

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

#66

Post by nindalf »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #51
tedajax wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually learned that the rain percentage is not the percentage chance that it will rain but is in fact the percentage of the coverage area that they will expect to get rain. So 50% rain meaning no rain at all or rain for the whole day is entirely reasonable.

I've always interpreted it as the percentage of time it will rain, i.e. if it says 50% chance from 7 to 8, it will rain during about 30 minutes of that interval and not rain during the other 30 minutes. (equivalently, you could say it's the % chance that it will be raining if you choose a given instant X in the interval). I've never read an official interpretation but that seems to fit reality (where I live) quite we…

50% means that they ran the simulation say 10 times and in 5 of those simulations there was rain in the area. How to translate that to real life - you should probably carry an umbrella if you don't like getting wet. Also interesting to note that weather presenters usually bump up the probability of rain by 10-20%, because people complain about false negatives (rained when it was predicted not to) rather than false positives (didn't rain when it was predicted to).

If you're interested in a good intro to this topic I recommend the chapter on weather prediction from The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver. Its a fascinating read.

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

#67

Post by buserror »

As a photographer, I try to follow up weather when I'm out and about. As many people have reported, the met office is next to useless, even on the short term!

One I've found works /wonder/ is the Norwegian weather service at http://www.yr.no/ . I'm not kidding, these guys not only give pretty accurate forecast, but they over england and they provide it in neat meteograms that are quite precise and easily read.

Now, how to explain that yr.no can predict weather in the UK and the met office can't... Met office has FUDed the country with "Oh but it's difficult in the UK, we're and island blah blah" but clearly, that's bollocks.

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

#68

Post by falsedan »

noir_lord wrote: post #33

Next up, Privatisation of the Met Office then. Shame as while the BBC websites presentation of the data is pretty poor the MET provide open data feeds (hard to see that continuing if they are privatised) of 3 hourly forecasts out to 5 days for 5000 locations that are considerably more accurate and detailed. http://i.imgur.com/vuCklmn.png is their example usage of the data.

I doubt that, it's part of the British Army

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

#69

Post by DanBC »

falsedan wrote: post #68
noir_lord wrote: post #33

Next up, Privatisation of the Met Office then. Shame as while the BBC websites presentation of the data is pretty poor the MET provide open data feeds (hard to see that continuing if they are privatised) of 3 hourly forecasts out to 5 days for 5000 locations that are considerably more accurate and detailed. http://i.imgur.com/vuCklmn.png is their example usage of the data.

I doubt that, it's part of the British Army

It has historical links to the british military, but it's part of BIS (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills).

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/who/management

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

#70

Post by DanBC »

buserror wrote: post #67

As a photographer, I try to follow up weather when I'm out and about. As many people have reported, the met office is next to useless, even on the short term! One I've found works /wonder/ is the Norwegian weather service at http://www.yr.no/ . I'm not kidding, these guys not only give pretty accurate forecast, but they over england and they provide it in neat meteograms that are quite precise and easily read. Now, h…

Why does the met office get international recognition for accurate forecasting if it's so useless?

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/who/accuracy/forecasts

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