The Met Office is forecasting a ''barbecue summer after two summers of rain''.
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Welll now , given the shortcomings in past summer forecasts from the Met Offoce in London how much credence should we give this one?
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Remember the summer of 2007? On 11 April of that year, the Met Office chirped: "The summer is yet again likely to be warmer than normal. There are no indications of a particularly wet summer." - the wettest summer for England and Wales since 1912. Temperatures were below average.
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In April 2008, the Met Office projected: "Summer temperatures are likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or above average." That didn't prepare people for one of the wettest summers on record, with high winds and low sunshine. Chief meteorologist Ewen McCallum said: "We can expect times when temperatures will be above 30C (86F) - something we hardly saw last year."
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Mr McCallum admitted recently in a news conference that seasonal forecasting is still in its infancy - a cross between climate change prediction and tomorrow's weather forecast.But he said normal forecasting had massively improved, with the four-day forecast now as good as the one-day forecast when the Met office started more than 30 years ago.
I think I have spotted his problem, the Met Office was actually founded in 1854. So as with so much of what he says he is actually technically correct, in that it is more than 30 years ago, but hardly accurate!
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1 comment:
I make no comment about the Meteorological Office, except to say that its forecast were, at least when I was in England pretty accurate overall - and certainly better than those available in France today.
However I strongly object to the expression "warmer temperatures" What does this mean? How can a temperature be "warm?" It can be high, low, average, below average etc. It cannot be warm or cold.
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