“Let’s hope Santa isn’t relying on weather forecasts from the U.K. Met Office. The British deep freeze of recent weeks (which has also immobilized much of continental Europe) is profoundly embarrassing for the official forecaster. Just two months ago it projected a milder than usual winter.
“This debacle is more than merely embarrassing. The Met Office is front and centre in rationalizing the British government’s commitment to fight catastrophic man-made global warming with more and bigger bureaucracy, so its conspicuous errors raise yet more questions about that “settled” science…
Meanwhile in Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology was forecasting below average rainfall for those parts of the Murray Darling Basin that were dumped on early September, with the worst flooding in 15 years. Last summer (2009-2010) the forecast was for more dry, and overall we have been led to believe it wouldn’t ever rain again like it used to, thus the investment in desalination etcetera.
And because the mainstream media, at least most journalists, are partial to Anthropogenic Global Warming theory, they don’t hold the Bureau accountable for any of their expensive and wrong seasonal forecasts.
Back to the UK, according to Peter Foster: “[T]he price tag on the country’s unpreparedness for this winter could reach $15-billion.”
And in Australia, never mind even trying to even get an estimate on what unpreparedness for the floods might be costing, we can’t even get the relevant water managers to agree that topping up a deluge with releases from a dam only 20 percent full has consequences…
Read more: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2010/12/government-to-finally-act-on-bureaucratic-flooding/
Oh. And from Peter Forster in parting: “…The suggestion that forecasting the climate is easier than forecasting the weather comes into the same category as acknowledging that governments couldn’t run a lemonade stand, but then believing that they can “manage” an economy.”
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Jo Nova and Warwick Hughes have it all covered (see here; http://joannenova.com.au/).
Our BOM should be sacked, – whether rain or temperature they predicted almost the exact opposite!!
Why are the papers not onto this?
Thanks Lank. I use this blog as something as a file for information, so will add the exact url for the Jo Nova piece, for future reference: http://joannenova.com.au/2010/12/could-the-australian-bom-get-it-more-wrong/
And why aren’t the papers onto this… because they subscribe to AGW theory and wish the rain and cold would go away.
Chris Kenny explains the general problem here:
from The Courier Mail / Herald Sun, Kenny on why the Canberra press pack gets it so wrong
Andrew Bolt – Monday, December 20, 10 (11:54 am)
“The Australian didn’t put Chris Kenny’s excellent essay on the Canberra press pack on-line on Saturday, but I now have permission from the editor in chief to publish it here. Enjoy:
JUST days before he was cut down by his own party, Kevin Rudd’s prospects were being talked up by most journalists in the Canberra press gallery. Not only were they publicly and privately contending that his continued leadership was assured, but they were predicting he would recover from disastrous polling to win re-election.
The journalists in the nation’s capital are some of the best paid in their profession and are assigned to the parliamentary building for the express purpose of delivering the inside story. Yet on this, the biggest political story for 35 years, they collectively failed at their task at least as spectacularly as had the outgoing prime minister.
They were not the only ones. Dozens of journalists based outside of Canberra also make a living chiefly from reporting and analysing federal politics. Dozens, perhaps hundreds more, aspire to be part of what is fashionably called “new journalism’’ through blogs, tweets and online postings. They too, with a handful of notable exceptions, were caught on the hop by the momentous events of June 23 and 24.
Journalists rightly see their duty to probe and examine as one the vital checks and balances in a transparent democracy.
Yet this year these campaigners for an open society were on a frolic of their own, reporting more words than ever thanks to the relentless demands of the 24-hour cycle. And, as the big one unfolded, many told us precisely nothing.
LAST week the intriguing story of the Rudd government’s demise was given front-page treatment in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. The source was named WikiLeaks, an organisation based in Europe, which passed on leaked cables by US diplomats. Proclaimed as “exclusive’’, it was a sad indictment of the state of Australian journalism that the US ambassador was describing systemic weaknesses in the Rudd government barely a year after its election and a full year before most journalists perceived any cracks.
Interviewed by conservative columnist Andrew Bolt, the ABC’s Barrie Cassidy had to concede the point that the US diplomats were more on top of things than the gallery. “And it’s a point The Australian has been making over and over and over again,’’ Cassidy said. When Bolt inquired as to what this said about the gallery, Cassidy replied, “Well, they missed the story for a very long time.’’
This is perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of Australian journalism’s blinkered coverage in a generation, although, to be sure, the gallery’s messianic hopes misjudged Paul Keating and Mark Latham, too, yet underestimated John Howard.
But journalists do more than contribute to the national conversation; they shape its parameters. By stifling debate on issues that don’t suit their predispositions, the crucial conduit between the public and its political representatives is blocked. This in turn can add to the isolation of politicians and accentuate their mistakes.
Labor is especially vulnerable to seeking affirmation from the gallery at the expense of listening and representing the views of its grassroots: the lure of the journalists’ praise becomes the sirens’ song. For all these implications, the health of journalism is a matter of vital national interest.
Australia’s journalistic cohort is not unusual. In most Western democracies, liberals (or, their preferred moniker, progressives) dominate journalistic ranks. That point is not contended except by the journalists themselves, who tend to bristle at the presumption.
This defensiveness compounds the situation since a commonsense acceptance of this fact would be the first step towards dealing adequately with the consequences, guarding against the perils of groupthink and making efforts to stay in touch with middle Australia.
The liberal bias is obvious to anyone who has dealt closely with the media or worked among journalists and the predisposition is evident in any sampling of their published or broadcast views.
It also has been demonstrated in a series of surveys here and abroad. The most relevant Australian survey was conducted in 2004 by RMIT University. It found that journalists thought the public viewed them as further to the Left than they saw themselves. Nevertheless, 55 per cent still placed themselves in the left-liberal camp, 36 per cent in the centre and only 9 per cent in the right-conservative domain. Given journalists’ usual reluctance to identify any political leaning, these figures are quite startling and probably underestimate the lean to the Left. As one Howard government minister said: “With the gallery we are always presumed guilty and have to prove our innocence; for Labor it’s the other way round.’’
Conservative politicians and media advisers learn to deal with this as a matter of fact. They learn how to carry an argument against the tide. Labor and Greens MPs, on the other hand, get no such training and so fail to develop the thick skin needed when the gallery turns. The gentlest prodding can expose a glass jaw.
Rudd’s cracked on May 12 when Kerry O’Brien asked a question that boiled down to this: would he seek a mandate for an emissions trading scheme at the next election?
“You know something, Kerry, where I think you’ve got this fundamentally wrong is, frankly, being absent from the negotiations in Copenhagen,’’ Rudd bristled. “Penny Wong and I sat up for three days and three nights with 20 leaders from around the world to try and frame a global agreement. Now it might be easy for you to sit in 7.30 Report land and say that was easy to do. Let me tell you, mate, it wasn’t.’’
Media bias is a particularly difficult challenge for the ABC, where being on the public payroll and having a commitment to public broadcasting are factors that help to shape that organization’s culture. Yet parts of the ABC seem no longer to pretend they can provide balance. Four Corners digs inside every Liberal leadership nuance yet has left Rudd and Julia Gillard unexamined. Insiders presents the prevailing political orthodoxy, through former Labor staff member Cassidy and two colleagues each week, and bounces it against an always lonely conservative. Seldom on the vast array of ABC programming (except perhaps in a discrete and tellingly named program, Counterpoint, on the backwater of Radio National) can you find incisive analysis of the economic and productivity reforms required for the nation’s future. It is as if the nation has reached nirvana on workplace relations, welfare and taxation.
In recent years the Fairfax papers have increasingly struggled for balance and tend to make token efforts by allocating space to designated conservative commentators. The diversity in opinion pieces is admirable but it can’t make up for the monocultural outlook at the journalistic coalface, where curiosity, scepticism, scrutiny, bravery and relevance are required.
We often hear about the virtue of media diversity, but little is spoken about journalistic diversity. Yet it matters little who a journalist’s employer is if he shares the politically correct assumptions of all the other journalists at a press conference and fails to challenge a softening of border protection laws, or inquire about the risk of moving ahead of the world on carbon pricing, or contend that borrowing money to waste it can never be a good thing.
ASK yourself which journalists at Fairfax and the ABC you could imagine sustaining a debate in favour of tough border protection policy, against putting a price on carbon, against gay marriage or in favour of stringent budget cuts. You may proffer Chris Uhlmann, Michael Duffy or Mark Simkin. But the strain of the exercise demonstrates that the handful of exceptions proves the rule.
Follow the informal comments and jokes of a range of journalists on Twitter and you enter a world where green is the new black, the National Broadband Network is a no-brainer, Julian Assange is man of the year, gay marriage is a crusade and border protection dares not speak its name.
Since journalists act as filters, packagers, interpreters and assessors of public debate, it follows that, as a group, they should represent a broad cross-section of mainstream views. Perhaps journalism just happens to attract progressive idealists in the same way taxi driving attracts people with no sense of direction and dentistry attracts people who ask lots of questions. But journalists were once drawn from a diverse mix of enthusiastic copy kids straight out of school, bright sparks with university degrees, mature-age career-changers fresh from a trade and aspiring scribblers seduced by the written word. Today, however, new entrants are almost exclusively tertiary educated. Few have worked in the productive sector of the economy and many work for organizations not required to report a profit.
Journalists, in other words, reside among the people described by Robert Manne in a recent essay in The Monthly as the the “permanent oppositional moral-political community’’, the core constituency for the Greens.
Manne elaborates further: “They are appalled by the way asylum-seekers have been treated. They believe strongly in the reconciliation movement and are opposed to the Northern Territory intervention.
“They once regarded Australia’s participation in the invasion of Iraq as unlawful and immoral. They now oppose our participation in the military action in Afghanistan. These people are in favour of gay marriage and opposed to internet censorship.
“They support the extension of the welfare state to decent mental health and dental care. They support a more progressive taxation system, including a mining tax.
“They are, at least in theory, opposed to upper-middle-class welfare, such as public funding for private schools. They would like Australia to become a republic.
“Above all, they regard the threat of climate change as the most important challenge of our era. The members of this virtual community live mainly in the affluent inner suburbs of the major cities although some of them now live along the NSW or Victorian coasts. Most are university educated.’’
The moral-political community is a minority voice, but it is loud and articulate. On the ABC or the pages of Fairfax newspapers you will find a visceral distrust of conservative politicians, existential despair about the environment, disdain for the vulgarity, ignorance and prejudices of working families and their suburbs and a smug self-satisfaction about the path to sustainability, reconciliation and multilateral harmony.
This groupthink has delivered a consistent narrative of national affairs during the past decade that now has been exposed as completely inaccurate. It is a version of history that portrays the people living in Australia’s regions and suburbs as gullible stooges who resisted the pleadings of Labor and the educated elite, only to fall for Howard’s racist, populist trickery and return a series of Coalition governments.
In the latest chapter of this fantasy, Tony Abbott dispatched the future of the planet so he could appeal to the darker angels of these suburban stooges through a fear campaign on boatpeople and a carbon price.
A good Labor government was undone by the personal faults of its leader, nit-picking and opportunism from the opposition and its fellow travellers, and some nasty internal leaks during the election campaign.
Now, Labor can reclaim its soul by melding with the Greens and healing the planet.
All the while, those who contested this narrative, such as The Australian’s Dennis Shanahan, were attacked during the Rudd years as ciphers for a proprietorial campaign to bring down a government. It is a matter of public record that they now are vindicated while the false narrative pursued by the majority is exposed as a myth.
The newly accepted wisdom of the gallery is that 2010 was the Seinfeld poll, the election about nothing. In fact this year’s campaign policy content was far weightier than 2007. There was Labor’s broadband policy, climate change policy, a crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin with a draft management plan yet to be released, which the Prime Minister promised to abide by. On border protection, perhaps the most incendiary political issue of the past generation, again the main parties were chalk and cheese.
On broader economic matters, a government that had spent more money, more quickly, than any other Australian government, taking the nation from a position of net savings back into significant debt, promised to stick with its strategy, including continued spending on stimulus programs. The government was proposing a big new tax on the resources sector and a shake-up of health funding that would change the basis of funding arrangements with the states.
In foreign policy the government focused on a bid to win a temporary seat on the UN Security Council. On all these matters the opposition’s view was a complete contrast.
Who could argue these issues did not present a challenging array of substantial policies and ideas for consideration? Yet none were deemed important enough for even the most cursory scrutiny by the press pack, which was absorbed instead by the sideshow of Latham and low-grade politics.
Why didn’t they properly scrutinize the NBN or the Coalition’s climate change policy, or the viability of the UNSC bid? Why didn’t they harangue the Prime Minister into releasing the draft Murray-Darling plan? Why didn’t they investigate the merits of the proposed health reforms or the need for continued government stimulus spending?
Why were constant Liberal claims that the best way to maintain the integrity of our immigration system and protect the lives of asylum-seekers was to stop the boats almost universally mocked or ignored until this week’s tragic events?
The answer is, as readers of The Australian will be aware, that some journalists did consider these significant issues. But most didn’t. The substantial policy debates did not occur to the extent that most observers would have preferred. Many factors were at play, such as the Coalition’s failure to adequately prosecute the case against the NBN and Labor’s desire to minimize the debates on climate change and border protection. And there was, of course, the distraction of the leaks.
But the compliance of journalists cannot be overlooked. The inescapable conclusion is that most journalists did not want to question the virtue of the NBN. Far likelier for Abbott to be quizzed over his knowledge of broadband technical details than for Gillard to be pursued over cost v benefit.
When you wonder why Labor was not constantly challenged about its abject failure on climate change policy, it is difficult not to conclude that on this issue most journalists were disappointed with Labor but considered it the lesser of two evils.
And again it would seem to go against the world view of the journalistic clique to even question the merits of seeking a place on the supreme body of the UN.
Journalists should be great defenders and practitioners of the informed scepticism that spawned the Enlightenment, the basis of the democracy we enjoy today.
Yet even the word sceptic is one that frightens journalists now, a sure way to be pigeonholed and ostracized. We would usually expect journalists to be enlightened sceptics about everything: it is their role.
One of the favourite ploys of the Left when on the defensive over bias is to decry the basis of the assessment. They claim we have moved on and the liberal-conservative divide is so passe. This view was perhaps best expressed this year by the ABC’s Quentin Dempster: “In any event the old Cold War `left-right’ spectrum measure seems no longer relevant in any discussion about journalistic bias, particularly as the paradigm has shifted post global financial crisis and with the dominance of global warming in all policy debates about economic and environmental sustainability.’’
This claim of a new paradigm only comes from the liberal Left. It is a claim that bells the cat, and reached its zenith when adopted by Rob Oakeshott to justify his repudiation of his conservative past by installing a Labor government. As Dempster would have it, now is not the time to talk of bias and tired political battles. Now is the time to unite and save the planet.
Rather, now is the time to examine what has transpired during the past decade. It is time to question how US diplomats and mainstream voters in the suburbs have become more acute political observers than professional journalists themselves…
Peter Foster’s claim that the UK Met Office released a winter [three month] forecast “..two months ago” is simply untrue. In fact on the 28/10/12, UK Met released a statement saying that some media reports about the coming winter misrepresented their data,and suggesting that people note they were now issuing forecasts for no more than a month ahead.
UK Met stopped making three month probabilistic forecasts after public reaction showed they were being widely misunderstood and misrepresented…the same problem that our BOM faces as it persists with this format.
While BOM is careful to explain the methodology and limitations of the prob format,many people are choosing to ignore this information and misunderstand how much detail can be derived from the method.
The first thing to note is that the prob forecasts do not predict quantities of rain,or extremes of temperatures. They just give a percentage for the likelihood of a region getting more or less rain or being warmer or cooler than the regional mean based on previous seasons with a similar state of a small number of factors [ SSTs,SOI tendency].
As the background information explains:
“The outlooks are based on the statistics of chance [the odds] taken from Australian rainfall/temperatures and sea surface temperature records for the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans. They are not,however,categorical predictions about future rainfall,and they are not about rainfall within individual months of the three-month outlook period.”
So slamming BOM for not predicting that an area exceeded its seasonal rainfall average by large percentage,or even any percentage is to misunderstand the methods.
The July 22 outlook for neutral odds of above or below average rainfall was not actually wrong if you understand what the forecast process does. The historical precedents were not strong for any tendency.,between 40 and 60% is essentially an even chance of exceeding median, The only place the outlook really failed was the southern half of Victoria where the probs for above median rainfall were less than 40%.
In the area of great topical interest here ,the Murrumbidgee basin , BOM Oct-Dec outlooks [posted 23/9/10] were in the neutral range [40 to 60%] at 55-60% likelihood of being wetter than average. IOW odds slightly,but not strongly[60% and above], favored wetter conditions. So the forecast was correct,as far as it technically goes. How much wetter than average is outside the forecasts scope.
Remember these sort of outlooks will never predict the exceptionality of ‘exceptional’ years,they just use a simple combination of factors and mine historic data for likelihoods…and they are inexpensive.
Thanks Jennifer for posting that Australian article; good to read it again
For all the global warmers enjoy http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/jamesdelingpole/
When you’re in a hole, George, stop digging
This is George Monbiot still looking for that elusive hot spot!
Love the comments too particularly this one
So even when you’re wrong you’re right
As for the comment above I don’t know much about the MET but WUWT http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/22/red-faces-at-the-met-office/#more-29931
has the relevant links in the article including a link to the October 2010 map produced by the MET and a statement from a MET employee
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/theres-a-mini-ice-age-coming-says-man-who-beats-weather-experts-20101221-1945a.html
The mega funded govt agencies like the UK Met Office and the Australian BOM have some explaining to do when privateeers with their lap tops, beat them and their super comuters.
As others have said, when people like Piers Corbyn have to get it right because thats how they get paid, whereas the public sectorists just have to ensure that the money keeps flowing irrespective of their results and usefulness.
Thanks for the link,Val. The screen-grab shows a probabilistic forecast automatically generated from a mix of historic data. The heading explicitly states that it is not an official [ie public statement] forecast..as I said above Met doesn’t do this forecast for the public anymore. They said so on 28th October. Of course they still have the means to generate the product:it is made of archived historical data combinations. They now use it internally,and for discussion with other national bureaus,because some people misuse it for political reasons. Funny,that.
To present this as an official forecast is to mislead. The quote from the Met Office forecaster Chivers contains a comment that is presented by the interlocutor as an “admission”. This sort of tactic makes my blood boil,as it is designed to make the person seem defensive,when really we have no sense at all whether she was or not from simply reading the words attributed to her.
As it is ,that graphic shows much of the UK in the 40-60% range of little confidence either way that it will be warmer than mean. Once again,not the forecast failure it is being trumpeted as.
The skill of prob forecasts in UK winters over the last couple of years has badly degraded,meaning that winter likelihoods has become less projectable by this means. What this really tells us is that the Arctic Oscillation has been behaving atypically compared with the last thirty years and more,which are the years that provide the historical numbers for crunching. While this AO change has translated into very cold outbreaks over northern Europe,a less commented fact is that it leads to above average temperatures across the Mediterranean,Turkey and North Africa. If you want some daily global perspective ,have a look at coolwx.com data.
A similar argument is posed for the breakdown in skill for SW WA three month probabilistics. Something not captured by a useful statistical representation has shifted.
The daily and weekly forecasts from dynamical models and observations are doing fine,and the prob outlooks were never designed to stand alone without reference to these anyway.
This is not and should not be reduced to an “even when you’re wrong you’re right” argument.
I have been looking at the comparison of the BOM 3 month outlook for rain and temp. in last 12 months and when you compare side by side any resemblance in the colour pattern is purely coincidental. Try it for yourself. It would be better if the forecasts were not published in case someone made a decision based on them. I have never seen any published assessments of the reliability of the BOM forecasts and it is time they were held to account. Makes a real joke of their claim to be able to tell us what will happen in 5, 10, 30, 100 years time!
That is entirely disingenuous Polyaulax; in fact your first paragraph is remniscent of the defence file in the recent New Zealand temperature case where the official temperature record put out by NIWA was litigated against for lack of veracity and improper adjustments; the Defence to this litigation is remarkable, if not understandable:
http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/statement_of_defence.pdf
Sections 7&8 of the Defence are instructive; the gist is that the official temperature record for New Zealand put together from the official data collection by the official organisation which was universally referred to as the source of official temperature data and records disowned that record and any intention of creating such a record.
Legally that is called misrepresentation; colloqually you can call it lying.
The point is this: the MET, BoM, NIWA, NASAGISS and all the other ‘official’ temperature recorders frequently make pronouncements and predictions about AGW; invariably they refer to the official temperature records to substantiate these pronouncements; it is either explicitly or implicitly represented that these temperature records are factual and to be relied upon; these pronouncements are aimed at the general public; the same public which is told that the predictions far into the future for AGW are also to be relied upon.
If the ‘official’ sources can’t even get the short term weather correct the justifiable question is why should they be relied upon for the long-term.
Given this lacuane in ‘skill’ this paragraph of yours is, given your insight and research capabilities, quite devious:
“The skill of prob forecasts in UK winters over the last couple of years has badly degraded,meaning that winter likelihoods has become less projectable by this means. What this really tells us is that the Arctic Oscillation has been behaving atypically compared with the last thirty years and more,which are the years that provide the historical numbers for crunching. While this AO change has translated into very cold outbreaks over northern Europe,a less commented fact is that it leads to above average temperatures across the Mediterranean,Turkey and North Africa. If you want some daily global perspective ,have a look at coolwx.com data.”
Given the absolute certainty with which AGW and the attentant certainties of ‘unusual’ weather events is promulgated how can you say the Artic Oscillation has been behaving atypically [in fact it hasn’t as, amongst others, Peter Chylek’s paper shows: http://www.lanl.gov/source/orgs/ees/ees14/pdfs/09Chlylek.pdf ] when presumably that sort of macro-weather circumstance is part and parcel of the AGW known world? Is this some sort of admission that not only are the certainties with which AGW is certified are not valid but also the physical consequences of AGW, if it is happening, are also not well understood?
This question needs to be strongly put to the ‘official’ temperature and climate sources; are their models making predictions on the basis of AGW consistent assumptions and criteria, and if so, given the complete belting AGW predictions have been taking, isn’t it time those assumptions were reexamined?
It’s true that the UK Met pulled the plug on seasonal forecasts after a few predictions went terribly wrong. Starting with the barbecue summer that wasn’t.
I see an opportunity here to discredit the models, as they don’t give reliable information about seasonal weather. BOM is predicting that south east Australia will be warmer over the next three months, but with La Nina still robust and solar activity at a standstill it doesn’t look promising for the warmists.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/temps_ahead.shtml
There might be a msm journalist who can see that this is the biggest story of the 21st century and take the opportunity to reinvent themselves for the sake of the nation and their own self interest.
Stick to the subject of the post,guys. Have the probabilistic forecasts really failed? On what terms? Are our expectations for the actual product or as we imagine it is?
Are we sure we understand how they are derived? They are very simple products that look at odds,not complex dynamic physical ones requiring super-computing power.
From what I see of claims of their failure,it seems some critics are sure they attempt things that they actually don’t. I’d recommend again reading the linked information within the Seasonal Outlook page at BOM.
They only really fail when a higher confidence [60%+] is unmatched by three month reality,as in the 24/8 forecast for SW WA to have a wetter than average spring. When things are 40-60,50-50 or 60-40,it means the precedents don’t give a strong lead. So wetter or drier are both valid outcomes
Another pitfall is that confidence varies with season:likelihoods become more certain after autumn in some areas,and less certain in areas that naturally have enormous variability like those furthest from the ocean.
You might find this terribly frustrating,but it’s all explained in the notes. They are products of limited range and use.They are never entirely successful,because they operate in the zone where predictability starts to emerge from unpredictability. El gordo,if the outlook fails significantly it is still valuable for that very failure:why are the precedents not as predictive as before,etc.
There is nothing disingenuous about my first comment’s opening,and I don’t see an analogy in the case you cite. The UK Met did not issue an official forecast for this winter,pure and simple,whether someone lifts a graphic off an interface deep within their system and pretends its an official release or not. The UK press’s misrepresentations of this are just another sign that the media don’t play by rules of accountability and consistency that they demand of others…despite a lot of knuckles being rapped this year. [David Rose, Jonathan Leake,etc]
Climate change produces non-linear movements at regional scale,and this is what the palaeo record tells us. What’s happening with the cold Europe-warm Arctic thing,beyond the MSM just calling it the cold Europe thing,is not contradicting any physical fundamentals of AGW. Things will fall into the ‘is-it-weather-is-it-climate?’ hole for a time,and have for a while…and global temperature has continued to creep up.
If the models don’t work, even after tweaking and calibrating, then they should be thrown in the bin. Thomas Globig of Meteomedia weather service said recently ‘the influence of solar activity on climate has been criminally underestimated.’
I like the sound of that.
http://notrickszone.com/2010/12/14/little-ice-age-and-expanding-arctic-ice-coming-climate-models-will-have-to-be-thrown-in-the-dustbin/
‘I find it quite plausible,’ said Globig, ‘that Arctic ice will expand over the next years.’
It will be the end of CAGW, because its definitely not what the models predicted for a CO2 driven warmer world. Popper would have been amused.
all right I’m no scientist but if the MET can’t predict weather 3 months in advance then how can it predict climate for years in advance
Surely a short term weather forecast should be credible (as viewed from hindsight even though it was not meant to be a short term forecast by MET) if an entity is to be regarded as credible on long term climate issues
otherwise we’re just looking at the MET’s multi million computer v Piers Corbyn’s laptop
and the laptop is much cheaper and for at least the last 2 winters has proven to be right
I understand the MET’s problem about going head to head with Piers Corbyn is that it’s been wrong with short term forecasting and Piers Corbyn has not been
Then why is it more credible on future climate?
and if it is not then what’s the use of the MET other than a data archive service
As I say I’m no scientist
And I’m happy to be educated
Computer models and predictions rely on input. If you put garbage in, the only thing you get out is garbage.
While it is comendable that scientists and climate experts are trying to ascertain patterns and cycles in our climate, the whole process seems to be hijacked by a pervading belief that mankind is having a far greater effect on the weather and our climate than he actually is?
This process is also being hijacked by the pervading belief that mankind can somehow “assist” the environment. It is also hijacked by a supreme arrogance that scientists and weather experts can “predict” future weather and climate patterns when it has recently become very obvious that they still haven’t figured out the real causes, the real patterns and the real answers.
Perhaps one day they will discover the actual causes of climate changes rather than only recognising the symptoms.
They have recognised some of the patterns but they haven’t nailed the real causes yet, otherwise their “predictions” would be accurate.
The more radical “predictors” of climate change and global warming resemble the “doomsday prophets” of earlier centuries. It is very worrying that they are able to access large buckets of public money to keep their “doomsday prophecies” alive in the public arena. Even in the face of highly credible evidence that their “predictions” are not coming true, they are still blindly hanging on to their failed computer models.
Maybe they need to go back to the start and examine other data that they can “input” ? They may come up with some better answers. They may even inch closer to solving the weather puzzle.
It is not wrong to keep trying, but it is very wrong to pretend you have the answer when there is much evidence to prove you don’t.
here’s Piera Corbyn today
Apologies if this is sent in error
Cruel winter News 23-12-10
Delta House, 175-177 Borough High Street. London SE1 1HR +44(0)207939 9946 From Piers Corbyn +44(0)7958713320 http://twitter.com/Piers_Corbyn , piers@weatheraction.com
WeatherAction World RED WARNING for extreme weather 25-31 Dec
WeatherAction forecasted weeks ahead that there will be many dangerous weather events around the world in the period 25-31 Dec and specified a triple whammy of extreme events for Britain/NW Europe, NE/E USA and South/East Queensland Australia.
ALSO see here for comment “Will it or won’t it on Xmas day in UK?”
The period 25-31 Dec 2010 is a Weather Action Red warning (World) period with top activity expected in sub-periods 25-27th Dec & 29/30th Dec.
“There will be many dangerous weather events around the world in this period”, said Piers Corbyn astrophysicist of WeatherAction long range weather & climate forecasters. “Snow/blizzards/rain (where appropriate) and winds will be much more severe than standard meteorology will predict from 2 days ahead in these periods”.
“For Britain/Europe, NE/East USA & East Queensland Australia we have specific long range extreme weather event warnings which we first issued end Nov / early December. The extremes to come are a consequence of Jet stream blockings and changes in both hemispheres caused by predictable solar-lunar effects”.
For Britain and Europe we stated in forecast words & maps:
Two waves of blizzards and drifting snow especially 25th-27th & 29/30th largely for East/South Britain and for a large part of NorthWest Europe (along with thundersnow) around South Scandinavia, Benelux, N Germany, North Poland and perhaps parts of the Baltic States. AND that thundersnow is likley in (North) Italy in this period also.
Piers commented on 23 Dec re Xmas “Our expectation of snow in the UK on Xmas Day is at the starting edge of this Weather period so there are uncertainties. We notice short range forecasts have been changing a lot for Xmas Day which is probably a reflection of increasing solar factors which will upset standard forecasts in this period. We still expect snow in parts of the UK on Xmas day but note that the general centre of this activity appears interestingly to be shifted somewhat Eastward in Europe so snow amounts on Xmas day itself in the UK will not be large.
For NE/E USA we predicted (12-12-10)
Very Major snow and blizzard events will strike NE & E USA in a double hit centered around 25-27th & 29-30th Dec; One of the most significant snowfall/blizzard periods in NE & east USA for decades.
For South/East Queensland eg Brisbane region of Australia 25-31 Dec we prediced (11-12-10) HEATWAVE maybe peaking at 36C to 38C around 28th but date unclear.
On climate change issues Piers commented:
“Standard meteorology doesn’t know what is hitting the world this Northern hemisphere winter and will continue to make serious errors throughout. They will significantly underestimate the ferocity of events especially of snow amounts in our forecasted extra activity / red warning periods, and at other times may make some overestimates.
“Their forecasts for the cold / snowy parts of Europe and USA will continue to predict temperatures to return closer to normal in about a week’s time but such forecasts will fail and generally be extended to further ahead on a daily basis until one of our less cold / milder periods is reached”.
“Standard meteorology models ignore solar and lunar factors and are associated with the failed science and falsified data of the CO2-based warmist view of climate and are bound to fail again and again.
“This winter is like the battle of Stalingrad in the ‘Climate war’. It will be long and hard and the public will suffer until the failed pseudo-science of man-made climate change – which become like a religion – is defeated; and instead available proven solar-based advances in forecasting science are applied to reduce misery and save lives”.
Other Information News (as via twitter)…..
Superb piece by Boris Johnson Mayor of London in Telegraph 20-12-10 –
The man who repeatedly beats the Met Office at its own game! http://bit.ly/fy4ddD
THANKS BORIS! Well I would say that wouldn’t I? But seriously so many politicians are totally committed to the warme…http://disq.us/vd7cw
G-U-L-P! JANUARY 2011 WeatherAction further details 12-42day ahead forecast is now available – via http://www.weatheraction.com/member.asp
Piers Corbyn: Sky News Report WeatherAction – We Told You So! December Warnings. http://climaterealists.com/6879#ClimateRealists
18 Dec Record Cold in N Ireland & massive snow disruption WE TOLD YOU SO says Piers on SKY TV Comment6 http://climaterealists.com/6856
As Britain+Europe are deluged in 100 years record snow Piers says WE TOLD YOU SO! See front page of his Dec forecast http://bit.ly/fUqRMt
“You ain’t seen nothing yet!” biggest blizzard for decades warning for NE USA 25-31 DEC from Piers Corbyn http://bit.ly/f7C8tx
Army rescues central Scotland from surprise blizzard 6Dec as MetOffice forecast fails. “The public don’t need to suffer this much”, says Piers Corbyn – WeatherAction long range forecast warned snow would be more intense than Met Office forecasts for5/6 Dec – http://bit.ly/f55e6K
as to what the MET is forecasting I don’t know; perhaps Polyaulax knows
“Stick to the subject of the post,guys. Have the probabilistic forecasts really failed?” Well, ok;
http://landshape.org/images/StockwellCSP.ppt.pdf
what’s the use of probabilistic if they’re more times incorrect than correct
or is it 50/50
then why not toss a coin
Sorry guys; this latest NH rough stuff is merely Gaia having a stab at population control by limiting a mob of high flyers achieving their personal expectations over the hols.
Meanwhile; have a gander at this!
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2010november/
Cheers all
Good one Val,
We may as well toss a coin. Probability will be just as accurate as the computer models and computer predictions. It may even luck it and be more accurate. That seems to be where we’re going anyway. It will also cost taxpayers less.
ROFL 🙂
Very pretty Powerpoint,cohey…but not at all about the subject at hand. The opening cites from Feynman are good but I’m not sure whether they’re there for ornament or for real,after reading a few pages.
In order to challenge a statement -certainly intended figuratively,not literally-from CSIRO chief executive Dr Megan Clark that ‘all parts of the nation are warming’, Dr Stockwell produces a chart for Nobby’s Head 061055 which shows a slightly [-0.02C/decade] declining mean temperature anomaly. While this site is listed as urban,as you’d well know it is on an exposed windy headland. A declining trend could reflect a trend in increase of strength and/or duration of sea-breeze,and/or a declining trend in offshore breeze,or the fact that rainfall at the site has trended upwards over the last 100 years or so…no exploration of factors like this. Maybe there is an issue with an instrument change or exposure shift,there is a big step down at around 1947/8 evident in the T MAX anomaly.
Dr Stockwell then produces a chart for ‘Longreach WS 036007’,showing a declining maximum anomaly trend. BOMs high-qual WS number for Longreach is 036031,and shows a rising MEAN trend. Funnily enough,WS 036007 is actually at Barcaldine,100km away[!] and it shows a rising MEAN trend as well. So he’s got the site wrong ,and he’s picked the MAX anomaly rather than the MEAN anomaly,which is truly indicative of trend. A MAX anomaly trend reducing over the years suggests that there are more hot days over time,thus they may become less anomalously hot within as greater population of high marks. Some early years certainly had some very hot weather,that even shows on the mean anomaly trend chart.
Dr Stockwell’s next slide shows a MEAN anomaly trend for Brisbane Aero,suggesting,but not demonstrating, that it may be contaminated by UHI influence.
So that’s it,three sites,one misidentified, to quash Dr Clark’s general remark. So much for Feynman.
Val,the 50/50 areas ARE a coin-toss:that’s pretty clear in the way they describe it. That means,in those areas, the years with similar factors in the past produced results in either direction without a trend to one state or the other. That’s a reflection of the very real variability between individual La Ninas,for instance. When you get past 60/40 then the indicators can be held to account. BOM are certainly not pretending this is more than a guide to be used in conjunction with short-term forecasts by other means. Again,I suppose you will say why bother,but it is not costly in time or money for BOM to do this work.It’s not super-computing.
Corbyn is very entertaining,but a lot of his work is hard to pin down.He is prolific and opaque,so gains traction by exhausting his doubters.Someone needs to audit his work before making cool judgements on his accuracy.
I notice his prediction for a Brisbane heatwave,made on 11/12/10,for 25-31/12,with temps of 36-38C ‘around 28th but date unclear’. Why don’t we home in on that and compare notes? BOMs dynamic ensemble predicts showers and rain for the next five days,so that suggests no heatwave. Let’s follow this forecast/
Gavin
It’s reasonable to expect ‘the Hudson Bay region of Canada had monthly mean anomalies greater than +10°C’ with the jet stream awry. At the moment its ice free and they are laughing.
The problem is that the Europeans don’t see the joke, because they were fed a porky by a bunch of politicians and scientists who said cold winters are a thing of the past.
The Denialati only need to prove that warming is not happening to ruin your party and the people will lol when they discover the AGW theory is flawed. Even when the warmists say but…but…it has been the third warmest year since records began.
Until you lot are prepared to discuss what probabilistic forecasting actually means, skill tests and significance tests, hindcasts, and cross validation – it’s pretty much a waste of time.
Yawn …. back to your BoM bashing….
So Poly, you think David has cherry-picked his locations to prove the annual temperature and rainfall records are wrong; I note you haven’t remarked on the annual rainfall records and how they don’t stack up with predictions of drought which is the main part of David’s power-point. But here is a slightly more comprehensive anaysis of the contradictions between BoM temperature records and the location and raw data particulars:
http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2010/05/12/the-australian-temperature-record-part-1-queensland/
Stewart’s anaysis deals with each state and territory and clearly shows that both the adjustments and the lack of consideration of UHI seriously taint the official BoM temperature record.
In respect of Nobbys, here is the trend site:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/hqsites/site_data.cgi?variable=maxT&area=aus&station=061055&period=annual&dtype=anom&ave_yr=T
As is apparent the decline in maximum temperature anomalies is greater than the increase in minimum temperature anomalies so that mean temperature anomalies has been declining over the 20thC. You say there cannot be a UHI effect because the site is situated on a headland, seperated from the urban centre; but this is poor logic; that urban centre is still afflicted by prevailing westerlies over the year which would blow the UHI increased temperature effect onto the headland thus increasing the minimum average since UHI is more pronounced at night. The temperature record is therefore consistent with an increased UHI effect and provides no evidence of an AGW effect which would operate on the maximum temperature.
cohey,I haven’t yet got time to look at the whole Stockwell thing,so I just commented on the first pages. I just thought that the use each of the station examples really is only superficial,and that was ironic in the light of the Feynman references…and nowhere did I say that Nobby’s had no UHI influence. Since the temperature trend is barely significantly negative,the UHI influence doesn’t exactly jump out at you,does it ? Nobby’s is an urban site by some criteria,but it’s also a strongly maritime site as well,which was the intent of my sentence,and i think the shape of the natural influences I listed has a whole lot to do with temperature trend there. I mean,it’s not central Cairo,is it.
David hasn’t tried to prove anything is wrong [that can’t be done from sample size of three in this case] he’s just trying to sow doubt while avoiding real analysis.
I’ve skimmed a bit of Ken Stewart. He finds that adjustments bulk up the upward trend,seems to make a lot of this,but I haven’t seen him look thoroughly at station infrastructure histories,which is where the individual adjustment decisions lie. I think he claims that a lot of that is simply by-the-book/paper and not based on site visits,and the spotty public documentation is no hinderance to forming this view[a matter of resources,I’d suggest].However, I remember a while ago Blair Trewin gave a very detailed account on some blog of the history of the Darwin record ,with its multiple station moves, microsite issues,and adjustment rationale,and I sincerely wish that that sort of detail was shared with the public much more regularly and accessably.
The Darwin and Northern Australia temperature history and the adjustments to that record is discussed in detail here [the 1st and 2nd parts are particularly revealing];
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/20/darwin-zero-before-and-after/
You are also too quick to dismiss Ken Stewart’s work; this from him on the RCS network:
http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/bom-vs-giss-who%e2%80%99s-right/
By any reasonable standard there is something rotten in the production of temperature records in Australia; we have inconsistencies with GISS, and glaring internal oddities like why the adjustments by BoM to the raw data is almost uniformly based on cooling the early data and not adjusting the late data for UHI, as this shows for Victoria:
http://landshape.org/news/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/untitled.png
No,I don’t entirely dismiss Ken,but…
Trewins’ comments on Darwin,wish I remember where I read them,were in relation to that Wattsian ‘auditing’,and completely put Eschenbach’s effort to bed. It was pretty tightly argued,with a discussion of local effects off Darwin Harbour included.
Back to Dr Stockwell. Is he seriously suggesting there is a real pan-Australian relationship between change in land use intensity and spatial distribution of rainfall trend??? If so, he’ll have to explain why rainfall has increased over all that area with no apparent change in land use intensity! Coincidence?LOL
Why is that southern bloc of purple in SE Tasmania? Nearly all of that area is designated wilderness! I can only imagine that Tas Forestry’s activities on the E fringe have been smeared across the rest of that area by the methodology. Why have hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of WA dried without any change in LUI,if he’s claiming correlation?
That is a nonsense slide,with it’s cute leading question. Really.
Polyaulax – here’s the GISS version of Newcastle, just south of Nobbys Head.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=425726620020&data_set=0&num_neighbors=1
here’s Casino Airport an hours drive from my place.
http://users.tpg.com.au/johnsay1/Stuff/Casino_temp.jpg
I’ve examined this site and it complies with the standards. The BoM don’t use this site even though it’s still operating as an automatic site.
The airport closed around 2001 and the surrounding land has been turned into a caravan park. BoM have added another Stevenson screen measuring station which is manually read everyday and it is located in the middle of the Caravan Park!!
Ah Poly, you’re such a hard case, pushing the AGW line despite these lapses in memory; let us know when you find that refutation of Willis Eshenbach’s analysis of the Darwin fudge by BoM!
Now, as for your critique of David Stockwell’s idea of “real pan-Australian relationship between change in land use intensity and spatial distribution of rainfall trend???” [why 3 ?’s?]. Are YOU seriously saying that land-use does not impact on climate features???? What about UHI? And this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/19/impacts-of-land-use-land-cover-change-on-climate/
Unfortunately the copy of the Mahmood paper is no longer freely available but an interesting exchange between that other hard case for the cause, Schmidt, and his criticisms that agricultural land use does not impact on climate as the Mahmood paper shows, is featured here:
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/08/23/does-gavin-schmidt-understand-boundary-layer-physics/
Just repeating my earlier statement ‘I’m no scientist but if the MET can’t predict weather 3 months in advance then how can it predict climate for years in advance’
Can anyone tell me?
Don’t the climate forecasts use the same GCMs as the weather forecasts
There’s a comment on Jo Nova’s http://joannenova.com.au/2010/12/could-the-australian-bom-get-it-more-wrong/ by Mike Borgelt which puts my question better than I can do:
‘The modelers claim that doing a climate forecast for decades in the future is easier than weather forecasting a few weeks ahead as they are looking for averages over long periods at that future time instead of very specific meteorological variables at specific locations.
The crucial assumption that they are making is that even though the weather patterns bear no relation to the actual patterns, the averages are the same or similar. I’m unaware of any proof of this and if this is so the average over an entire 3 month period, ending in 3 months’ time, of a large area meteorological variable like rainfall or temperature should be relatively easy to predict accurately.
It demonstrably isn’t.’
Here’s my question again “if the MET can’t predict weather 3 months in advance then how can it predict climate for years in advance”
Polyaulax: “In order to challenge a statement -certainly intended figuratively, not literally-from CSIRO chief executive Dr Megan Clark that ‘all parts of the nation are warming’ Dr Stockwell produces a chart for Nobby’s Head 061055 which shows a slightly [-0.02C/decade] declining mean temperature anomaly. ”
Dr Clark’s statement can be disproved by a single counter-example in the same way that the existence of a single black swan disprove the statement the “all swans are white”. The statement ALL is not figurative (i.e. containing images). Its an hyperbole. I don’t think the use of hyperbole is befits the position of science head of CSIRO. Thanks for the correction, is was Barcaldine.
“Back to Dr Stockwell. Is he seriously suggesting there is a real pan-Australian relationship between change in land use intensity and spatial distribution of rainfall trend?”
Its not just me suggesting it, its been supported by abundant research such as Zhang L., Dawes W.R. and G.R. Walker, Response of mean annual evaporation to vegetation
changes at catchment scale, Water Resources Research 37:3 pp701-708, 2001.
It’s not for me to prove anything. Any rigorous scientific approach should DISPROVE alternative explanations first. It has been widely established that albedo changes, roughness and aerosols all act to reduce precipitation when land-use increases. The analysis has already been done, but is conveniently passed over for the explanation du jour by less rigorous colleagues.
Hey,guess what,Dr Clark made a simplification for conveniences sake given the interview context.Wow. This is hyperbole? If she had been submitting a detailed statement then perhaps we could expect more precision. So tell me,was she basing her view on a coarse scale trend map? Is this not OK?
It certainly up to you to support your use of that graphic combination to posit a ‘close match’ between LUI and rainfall decline. Why shouldn’t ‘alternative explanations’ be put with rigor? Aren’t you very much pushing Zhang et al 2001 beyond the authors conclusions by pointing at two simplified maps of Australia and saying” there’s a rough match, Zhang explains it” ?
Why do you think you can suggest a close match in one direction and ignore the other? Why again has decadal mean rainfall increased significantly across such a large area that shows no change in LUI? Where are all the papers discussing how a greening of the WA desert has driven an increase in mean rainfall?[joke] Why has such a large area of the NSW NW slopes and plains bucked your correlation though this area has seen an increase in LUI over the last four decades
Why should the South Coast and Southern Tablelands of New South Wales only start to show a dramatic decline in mean annual rainfall after the 1950s when extensive clearing for grazing on the ST and in some coastal valleys was underway from the 1830 to 1850s and at current extent by the early 1900s? Regional rainfall held steady or even increased up to the 1920s,and subcoastal valleys and escarpment forests remain extensive and little disturbed from the Victorian border to the Shoalhaven Valley above Nowra.
Why has central west coastal Tasmania seen an increase in decadal mean RF since the 1950s and a slight drying trend before? I still can’t figure out why the LUI intensity graphic insists SW Tasmania has seen increase in LUI when it is almost entirely national park. The construction of the Gordon-Serpentine reservoir must be the reason,but how can turning thousands of hectares into water surface be responsible for declining rainfall to the East? Shouldn’t this humidify the prevailing westerly winds? Or maybe the LU/RF relationship when transposed to the real world isn’t as simple as your facetious visual suggestion would imply.
Polyaulax I think you’ve been beaten
and what’s the answer to my question
if the MET can’t predict weather 3 months in advance then how can it predict climate for years in advance’
I’m suspecting you can’t answer that
anyway happy Christmas to all
Merry Christmas everyone; thanks to Jennifer for hosting a great site; and thanks to David Stockwell for visiting today; I’ll have something to say about nuclear on Boxing Day
Stuff Xmas – who cares. What’s it have to do with the neo-Marxist agenda and UN world govt by carbon regulation? Under our new carbon laws Xmas will be banned. Too much CO2 production to be sustainable.
“if the MET can’t predict weather 3 months in advance then how can it predict climate for years in advance’” – what drongosity …. blog isn’t getting any smarter is it
well Luke appears you still can’t address your mind to a question
Look at the sentence ‘
if the MET can’t predict weather 3 months in advance then how can it predict climate for years in advance’
what is your answer
if you can’t answer get some friends and go out and enjoy yourself
Have a nice Christmas Luke and by the way have you ever lived in a Communist country
What a daft comment – it’s an initial value problem compared to a boundary condition problem. And even sillier who sez anyone is predicting the weather in 3 months time. Where did you get that idea? Such old sceptic nonsense.
Luke
Probabilistic modeling may have some benefit, but it is unreasonable to expect seasonal weather forecasting from these models.
Climate change is a random walk, so trying to predict next winter in the UK is not feasible. The 2009-10 winter was the first shock and this season has also been extra snowy, so the Met has given up on seasonal forecasting because they are fooled by the randomness of the system.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/aqua_1km_uk1255_12242010.jpg
We should know soon if it’s a Dalton Minimum.
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_1024_4500.jpg
Ideally, if there are no volcanic eruptions it will give us a perfect test bed for the ‘criminally underestimated’ solar effect.
Merry Xmas inmates – time for a quick blog between family, friends and party venues. Better not be any sceptics at Xmas lunch or I’m gonna beat them with a chicken drumstick.
The seasonal forecasting technology is little better than saying the probability of rainfall etc is somewhat determined by ocean temperature patterns and the SOI. And that has some persistence over time. Events evolve to some predictability. That’s “some”. Forecast skill which is on top of probabilities varies from time of year and place to place. So the probabilities can look OK e.g. 80:20 but the skill poor. Within the bunch of likely years there is still significant variation.
A lack of appreciation of these factors means one shouldn’t use seasonal forecasts if you’re uncomfortable with that. They’re not deterministic. One shouldn’t over use what the forecasts really mean.
And a Merry Xmas to you, comrade.
Luke,
I am not prepared to discuss the less than useful models until they catch up with reality:
http://www.mps.mpg.de/projects/sun-climate/papers/uvmm-2col.pdf
NASA just reported the decrease in UV in important climate effect bands over the last 10 years recently also:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/solarcycle-sorce.html
You can keep beating it, but, it isn’t going to move.
KuhnKat – Irrelevant to this discussion.
Replacing a strong El Nino with a strong La Nina is proving to be problematic.
There has been no change in the start of the NH winters and that seems to suggest the NAO is greatly influenced by the sun.
Warwick Hughes at http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?cat=20 has this link to http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/CP08277.htm
The resolution and potential value of Australian seasonal rainfall forecasts based on the five phases of the Southern Oscillation Index
and the peer reviewed paper
http://www.mackinnonproject.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=86&Itemid=1
Verification and value of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology township seasonal rainfall forecasts in Australia, 1997-2005
(this is part of the summary)
We verified the Bureau of Meteorology’s seasonal rainfall forecasts for 262 townships throughout Australia, from its inception in June 1997 to May 2005. The results indicate that the forecasting system had low skill. Brier Skill Score and the receiver operating characteristic values were uniformly close to the no skill value. Forecast variances were consistently small. The overall observed variance was 0.0048, 2.1% of the variance of a perfect system. The estimate of the gradient of the outcome against forecast was 0.42 and was imprecise. Definitive statements about bias cannot be made. The value of the forecasts for decision-makers was estimated using value score curves, calculated for six forecast scenarios. All curves indicated that no economic benefit could have been reliably derived by users of the seasonal rainfall forecasts, with the exception of users with decisions triggered by a small shift in the forecast from climatology, in which case small economic gains may have occurred.
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/that-met-office-global-long-range-probability-map/
relates (with links) to the Met Office denial of having predicted a mild winter
the post has been updated with a screen grab of the Met Office long range probability map in October 2010 (which they claim is not a forecast).
The map is shown in the post (click to enlarge). The highlights are the Met Office’s assertion of an 80% probability of warmer than average temperatures for November, December and January for Scotland and a 60-80% probability of the same for Northern Ireland, Wales and most of England.
There is a new comment on the post “Could the Australian BOM get it more wrong?”.
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/12/could-the-australian-bom-get-it-more-wrong/
Author: Chris Gillham
Comment:
The Bom doesn’t have to worry about getting its forecasts wrong when it can rely on the media to gets its records wrong.
As described by The West Australian newspaper on December 1, 2010, re the climate of spring 2010:
“… the State sweltered its way through the hottest spring on record.”
See http://www.waclimate.net/imgs/west-australian-newspaper-1-12-2010.gif
The BoM has just published its Monthly Weather Review Western Australia November 2010 …
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/mwr/wa/mwr-wa-201011.pdf
… which combines with the October 2010 review …
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/mwr/wa/mwr-wa-201010.pdf
… and the September 2010 review …
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/mwr/wa/mwr-wa-201009.pdf
… to give us the official mean temperature across the western half of the country for spring 2010.
Sep 2010 – 19C – 0.7C below average
Oct 2010 – 23.1C – equal average
Nov 2010 – 26.6C – 0.7C above average
In other words the mean temperature across WA for spring 2010 was 22.9 C – exactly the same as the BoM’s baseline mean from 1961-1990.
For example, the spring mean in 2009 was 23.6C and in 2008 it was 23.38.
Spring 2010 averaged across WA was utterly normal but for many readers of WA’s monopoly daily press, it was “the hottest spring on record”. Record temps were indeed recorded in the state’s lower south west but the remaining two million square kilometres of WA were below or well below average, and public perceptions about climate change shouldn’t be distorted by such sloppy journalism.
Christopher Booker slams the UK Met over bad forecasting.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8223165/The-green-hijack-of-the-Met-Office-is-crippling-Britain.html
for those of you interested in GCM’s ability to predict weather and climate here’s a good article http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11387&page=0
by Peter Ridd Professor of Physics at James Cook University
(cutting and pasting a couple of paras)
He says GCM’s for a period of a few days give predictions which are nothing short of brilliant and a real triumph of modern physics. They are certainly useful for periods of up to a couple of months for predicting phenomenon such as El Niño and La Nina events. However my own experience with forecasting El Niño events is that the GCMs are no better than trivially simple models (Halide and Ridd, 2008) so it is doubtful that the impressive complexity of the GCMs contributes a great deal to accuracy.
At periods greater than a few months, the GCMs fail. They do not simulate the cooling of the ’40s to ’70s (decadal scale), the Holocene Climatic Optimum (millennial scale) or the large scale events associated with glaciations (10000 year time scale). In the light of such comprehensive failure of the models over periods from 1 to 10000 years, why would one believe that GCMs would be accurate over the 100 year time scales which are of greatest concern to us?
…
In the end we are relying upon models which are based upon poorly understood physics and operating for conditions outside the range for which they have been tuned. They have been demonstrated to be not useful in making predictions on any timescale longer than a couple of months. Although the GCMs are of considerable scientific value in pushing ahead our understanding of climate physics, it is difficult to tell if they have any value in making predictions.
More irrelevance, Vizard’s paper is out of date. And just more parroted nonsense from the forces of evil. So boring. The arguments often wrong just keep getting recycled. Isn’t the internet a beautiful place?
‘The GCMs can give a very good prediction of the weather up to a week in advance. The various parameters can be tuned to improve accuracy, and this process of tuning can continue as more data becomes available with time. This is a process which our own Bureau of Meteorology uses with its weather prediction models.’
I agree that BOMs forecasting is fairly good up to a week in advance. The recent floods were textbook accurate, but their seasonal forecasts are woeful.
Most of the punters are predicting cool/neutral SOI 6 months ahead, but I’m going against the trend and forecast a back-to-back Nina.
The IOD has decayed, as per usual.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/ENSO-summary.shtml
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/27/3102097.htm?section=justin
Here is global warming at its finest today.
As I mentioned before: there is nothing wrong with our scientists and weather experts working towards solving the climate puzzle. I think they should be.
There is something very wrong with them pretending they have all the answers when they clearly haven’t.
Let’s encourage them to keep trying but let’s also keep letting them know that they haven’t arrived at the answers yet.
sorry Luke but where’s your evidence for ‘Vizard’s paper is out of date’
try to think logically now
Give a peer response rebuttal
Luke give us a reference or give us your full name and expertise for making the statement to which I refer in my previous comment
You have my full name and I’ve said I’m no scientist so I rely on other experts
Now what do you do
Look forward to your response
O/T
Paul Brown, writing in the Guardian, spins a yarn by clutching at straws.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2010/dec/27/weatherwatch-insects-climate-change
ha ha ha
It’s a bit like quantum physics, the cat is dead inside the box and outside as well. More nonsense.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26cohen.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
Unrelenting denial.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/don1.JPG
Luke just testing your credibility and found it wanting
sorry Luke you’ve got no credibility with me anymore, I’m going to ignore you
Xmas Greetings,all.
How’s Piers Corbyn going,Val?
His predicted [12/12/10] Very major snow and blizzard event in a “double hit centred around 25-27/12 and 29-30/12. One of the most significant snowfall/blizzard in NE and E USA for decades” looks half good…superficially. Big blizzard,with plenty of daily record snowfalls…and daily record rainfalls mixed in,as this was not a particularly cold event. No evidence this event was of a decadal or greater significance. Piers got the timing half right, but the second period is shaping as a miss with sunny conditions and max temps above freezing forecast by conventional means. There are blizzard conditions in the NW USA,but Piers was specific about the East being the centre of action for 29-30th.
His predictions for two waves of blizzards-drifting snow simultaneously in the UK and Northern Europe is a dud. The UK has been in a thaw,which is predicted to continue til New Year. Northern Europe has been blizzard-free, though still cold.
The Corbyn forecast heatwave for southern Queensland for 25-31/12 ,peaking at 36-38C,has utterly failed to materialise. Why didn’t he foresee the record breaking wet period? 😉
Polyaulax Christmas Greetings to you! You’re right about Corbyn’s prediction for a Sth Qld heatwave having failed to materalise – still his prediction for very Major snow and blizzard events in NE & E USA did materalise as well as his prediction for the UK winter; do the Met Office issue forecasts outside of the UK, I don’t know but maybe you do. I don’t think even Piers says he is infallible.
Corbyn admitted that his forecast for the second half of November[wet and mild] was completely wrong when he released his December forecast. This really means that Corbyn’s entrail reading from earlier in the year had no idea that the blocking pattern allowing long term intrusion of Arctic air via Scandinavia and the North Sea would become established. It also means the Corbyn December forecast [supposedly made on 29/11] was not a long-range effort:he revised it according to conventional guidance. As well you might not that Corbyn’s long range outlook[from May] was more than a little probabilistic! He guessed that December might be snowy. I would have ,too!
UK Met had advised from the 19/11 onwards that cold weather was approaching and on a nearly daily basis [22-23-24-25-26/11] predicted increasing cold and snow. By 29/11 UK Met advised that there was no sign in their “extended outlook of the icy weather losing its grip”. Yet somehow all this is painted as a failure by official forecasters.
Well,the ‘somehow’ is actually no mystery. With Corbyn’s ranting self-promotion and the efforts of his champions in the tabloids,that’s a lot of history being re-written.
El Gordo
Here’s some tips for you when evaluating forecasts – even Corbyn’s
(1) beware of anyone who seems infallible. They should get things wrong at least x% of the time due to chaos
(2) you can’t pronounce any forecast scheme as “wrong” based on one forecast – being spectacularly right doesn’t make up for being utterly wrong. Write in on the wall – rights, wrongs and draws – do they do better than random dice throws or persistence
(3) forecasts should have a well described physical mechanism e.g. ENSO, IOD and of course this makes a big problem for solar – the natural variation in the system already might line up with solar cycles now and then – but is it solar cycles or just pseudo-cyclical noise
(4) you should ask for the cross-validated (put one in – leave on out) hindcast evaluation. Simple regression is not enough.
(5) better still ask for 10 years of totally independent data not used in model formulation
(6) beware models with too many parameters e.g. SOI+IOD+solar+your arthritis – usual statistically crud and will fall apart
(7) minority odds have to occur – e.g. if it is 70:30 – 30% of the time won’t be “right”. This can happen the first time you use a forecast
(8) don’t confuse probabilities with skill e.g. if the probabilities were 75:25 but there were only 4 years in the forecast group you have very low number – so mathematical “skill” would be low. How many get this?
(9) different schemes need different evaluations e.g. BoM have changed their schemes over the years – each needs a fully independent evaluation – so Val make his blunder with Vizard
(10) it’s a mugs game – don’t expect too much
(11) oh yea – PDO/IPO can’t be forecast – you only know it when you have it
oh and what do these seasonal forecasts have to do with AGW climate modelling – not a lot
Reasonably good advice, but I think the PDO is fairly predictable. Every few decades there is a step change from warm to cool and back again.
My gripe with BOM is their narrow view of climate, with their global warming blinkers and expensive models. These floods were predictable, I have been screaming it from the rooftops for more than a year, but nobody heard.
The editors of the MacCulloch Dictionary 1841 already knew something about forecasting: ‘Once in such cycles, a year of unmitigated drought prevails, during which no rain falls, and the effects of which are equally intense on the coast, and in the interior. Close upon this visitation follows a year of flood.’
Politically, seasonal weather forecasting is far more important than AGW.
PDO isn’t predictable except that is changes sometime – exact year ??? What’s the basis for any predictability.
What we do know if that PDO influences La Nina intensity i.e. NOW !
Subscribe to http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/seasonalclimateoutlook/index.html
I note these guys also have an historical archive of forecasts.
A cool PDO creates more La Nina, but I’m not too sure about the intensity angle. This particular Nina is as strong as the 1955/56 Nina, so we should expect more floods.
This gives a clearer picture.
http://i43.tinypic.com/33agh3c.jpg
At the beginning of the cool PDO in 2008 it would have been prudent for BOM to say floods are coming.
Careful El Gordo – do you get El Nino events in cool phase PDO – yes ! So you’re operating in full 20:20 wonderful hindsight.
If you bin the last 100 or so years into El Nino, neutral, and La Nina – then by +ve and -ve IPO – the standout is La Nina with cool phase IPO – wetter than wet probabilities !!
El Gordo
Luke asked I forward some charts to you… but the email address is bouncing. if you email me at jennifermarohasy at jennifermarohasy.com i will onforward stuff from Luke
Spangled
You should have email i onforwarded from Luke
Jen
Don’t know why its bouncing, I’ll have a closer look a little later.
Thanks for that, Luke. I admit to ignorance of the IPO so further reading is required.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/08/comparison-of-ipo-with-pdo-and-enso.html
‘The physical nature of the IPO is under investigation; it is still not clear…to what extent the IPO is really independent of ENSO red noise and especially of SST variations near decadal scale.’
So…back to the title of the post.
Have the rainfall prob forecasts failed? Septembers RF 3-month outlook was clearly a success,and October’s is doing very well,though the caveat is they must be judged on the 90 days and no less. The only failure- strongish confidence for wetter than average SW WA,and weak confidence for drier than average SW Victoria-was Augusts outlook.
August’s temp outlook is not dissimilar to Septembers: temperature probs fail in the north with the development of an early monsoon and the huge scale of the rain event in the north east,but are not so bad in the south, where the above average cloudiness has kept temperatures above the mean in a lot of Victoria and southern NSW. Decembers figures still to come will probably improve the September forecasts success.
Well researched El Gordo – but the IPO is a PDO like phenomenon – same thing?? Well a statistical analysis that suggests it exists.
Anyway the combination of La Nina and -ve IPO is a jaw drop. Wetter than wet.
If you want another forecast subscribe to SPOTA – http://www.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/spota1-getpassword.html uses SST information on ENSO and IPO it seems
Polyaulax makes the point though – you can’t assess BoM’s success or failure on one throw of the dice. And if you gonna play forecaster put your forecast up ahead of time with your historical wins and losses.
‘The caveat is they must be judged on the 90 days and no less.’
Seems fair.
Well if the 90 days ain’t up – how do you know how it ends? Unless of course a record in the first week makes the maths unlikely.
http://breast-cancer-research.com/content/12/S4/S13
Luke Walker should have added an additional tip in his previous advice to “el gordo”.
To quote the first line in the above reference…
If Peer Review was a drug it wouldnt get released.
And on this basis all the balderdash about AGW is founded, and thousands of less than credible so called scientists spin their webs of deceit and misrepresentation in order to keep their sinecures safe, and the public confused…..all the while defending their positions by screaching…. Peer review…Peer Review…. like a cohort of deranged Daleks.
Happy New Year
Says the unpublished non-peer reviewed Malcolm Hill pers. comm.
Witch burnings, entrail divining and ranting are easier aren’t they ?
” thousands of less than credible so called scientists spin their webs of deceit and misrepresentation” ….. thousands eh – it’s a global conspiracy mate – a secret order … world government …. oooo … ooooo
I thought that would get your bile juices running again, and as is par for the course you havnt read the reference provided.
Basing advice to governments on such a demonstrably flawed process is laughable…but when that advice is about serious economic disruption, it IS a reflection upon the integrity of the advisers that they parrot the mantra so frequently to defend their idiot positions…all the while knowing what a crock PR is.
But rest easy Walky old boy, its not the only area so bereft of nous and commonn sense as the coming debate about Nuclear Power is going to reveal.
2011 is going to be a fun year.
Yep that’s good – courts and rule of law are a joke too. So let’s have complete anarchy -the Malcolm solution.
So given peer review is smashed and science is all flawed – I wonder how all this technology works? How has medicine progressed?
Check under your bed for reds tonight. And how long has that van been parked across the street?
Ahhh things are back to normal.
If you bother to read what is being said, you might realise that none of your supposed claims for the role of PR in science are true as necessary preconditions.
In fact greater progress would have been made with a more open system and less costly approach ..
to quote:
” My fear is that the real barrier to change is vested interest. That £1.9 billion cost of peer review is a great many jobs, and, more importantly, it is seen as an essential part of the £24 billion industry of publishing, distributing, and accessing journal articles, which itself is 14% of the costs of undertaking, communicating, and reading the results of research”.
“This is not only a great many jobs but also considerable revenue and profits for commercial publishers and scientific societies that own journals.”
Now thats the real nub isnt it…the precious so called learned societies have a vested interest in manitaining the status quo because they make money out of it.
Well bugger me, who woud have thought that .
The political nature of climate change has had a detrimental effect on the peer review system, because of the large grants being bandied about, but peer review in other areas of science is still operating normally.
When the politicians eventually discover they have helped create a monster, AGW funding will dry up and peer review will gain respectability once again in the scholarly world.
Not according to the breast cancer article I have cited.
What AGW has done, is expose PR for the quite inadeqaute process that it is, and hopefully they might have now the gumption to now subject it to some obvious improvements…particularly where public monies are involved, and not just AGW money.
According to the author the only reason PR is operating normally is because the right people are getting their cut of the cake ie vested interest.
What a system.
Agreed, a major shake-up needs to happen, but I’m not sure how to transform the peer review system without stifling investment in worthwhile disciplines.
It’s just your prejudice Malcolm – pure and simple.
If science was that bent – all the progress we have seen in recent fields would not be happening.
You’re just politicising.
e.g. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/12/science-is-self-correcting-lessons-from-the-arsenic-controversy/
Gavin is allowing dissenting voices, now that’s a change for the better.
Well then smart arse you take it up with the author, and then we will see who is prejudiced.
I have seen and read enough of this stuff to say that relative to standards in other fields of endeavour the scientific fraternity are too precious by miles…and if they had any real brains they would have done somehting about the failures of their archaic system of ranking and review by now ….but as the auther says, there are too many vested interests for that too happen.
But dont worry… its the tax payers who will pay for the inefficiencies /inadequacies yet again.
Talking of inefficiencies and unadulterated waste, the desal plants are white elephants at a billion dollars a pop. Do we get a Royal Commission? Not on your nelly, the Third Estate is dead in the water.
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/qld-desal-plant-to-be-mothballed-20101205-18l2x.html
Yes El Gordo and you can blame that on Flannery (and his PR quoting mates from the various universities and the CSIRO) and his scare mongering idiotic predictions about capital cities being out of water by 2008/9/10 etc, none of which came true. So much for being Australian of The Year.
Scared the crap out of the labour states premiers so that they blindly committed to ” n” billion dollar de sal plants ..and abandoned other options of building more dams or raising the capacity existing at a fraction of the cost. .
The one over here will have to moth balled…which is just as well because it will be driven by expensive renewables like wind …so the cost of both water and power go up by > 30%.
Well you’d be foolish to listen to Flannery who is simply an Australian science scene “personality”. However – the place was about 12 months from no water. Imagine the outburst from reactionaries like yourselves for no action and the place running out.You’d be a lynch mob.
NIMBY syndrome in SEQ has seen governments fall on dam and highway location issues.
Every wants the benefits but no downside from having land alienated or paying for it.
So face it – you’d be screaming whatever happened.
And like most commentators you guys have never and will never be in a position to have to make a decision on such matters. So you can sit in your big lounge chairs and sip your Pure Blonds or in Mal’s case a fine Pinot Grigio and opine away.
Where you can be critical is unnecessary bureaucracy and/or building desal and recycle plants with poor quality engineering. If you’re going to do it – don’t make a hash of it.
Water and power will go up simply because governments of all colours haven’t substantially (till in the last few years) invested in infrastructure – roads, ports, power, water, communications etc
Time to pay up.
You lot are forecasting geniuses – let’s have a look at Cania Dam built in 1983 up near Monto in southern Queensland – only in this event has it flowed over the spillway – took 27 years. This should be an indication that the place has been in a drying regime for decades – until La Nina + PDO put stop to it.
And so you could build dams and they won’t fill (no rain!)
Moogerah Dam down past Boonah is spilling for the first time in 19 years !!
So the best one can do is an engineer is develop a runoff model for the catchment in questions and put the rainfall record through the 120 years of record hindcast simulation. You can also do hypothetical extreme event calculations.
If they wern’t so focussed on global warming they would have seen the cool PDO was firing-up and big rains were on the horizon. Because governments and media refused to consider the true state of climate change we will see the demise of Labor around the country.
The nanny state is doomed, while the msm will shuffle their feet and say don’t shoot the messenger.
Found this interesting link: http://ioc3.unesco.org/oopc/state_of_the_ocean/atm/nao.php
And the warmists said a negative NAO would never happen again.
With the subsurface water in the east and central Pacific traveling 4 degrees C below the average for this time of year, my guess is that La Nina will fade to neutral and then ramp up again. A back to back Nina will be devastating for the people on the land.
So have we had back to back La Ninas?
http://www.stormfax.com/elnino.htm
http://ggweather.com/enso/years.htm
Depends on definitions?
Just keep your eye on the ball. Subsurface below average and sst along the eastern equator remains cool.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ocean/weeklyenso/heat-last-year.gif
1. For the record Walker , Flannery IS involved on the Queensland Climate Change Council and also with the SA Govt, and along with all his other roles is in a position of great influence which he has used to promote himself, and his idiot messages with great effect. So just flipping him off as science communicator is just more b/s from you.
2. His predictions about each capital city being out of water were disproved/ridiculed long before the current downpours on the eastern coast.
3. If some states were 12 months away from being out of water thats because they have not been doing proper water planning and dam building for many decades …primarily because of the idiot greens and Flannery types being so influential with the cowardly pollies. To say that the only solutions are the highly expensive, to build and operate de sal Plants, is stupidity at its best when there had been…with proper prior planning.. other known cheaper options always available. Some dams may take longer to fill but fill they do.
4. There is nothing unusual about the rainfall patterns over the MDB and the Adelaide Hills.There are many- many people living off 100kl tanks quite satisfactorily and watering their gardens as well..showing that its not an absence of rain that is the issue. If the dams were low thats because the populations had increased since the last dam was built.The MDB is also more about excessive use not an absence of rain.
5. In general most of the difficulties have to do with bad management (including poor use ) and even worse poor public policy, extending over a long period, brought on by the fear created by the rabid and irrational greens.
The interest and holding costs alone of all the now under utilised de sal plants would now help to finance better road,schools and hospitals. Its called capital planning and budgeting.
BTW Your own references shows that the frequencies of SOI patterns are well known.
What the f is the Qld Climate Change Council – do they do something? Strangely I thought it was hard nosed water engineers. Do froth on.
4. Listen mate – obviously you don’t understand worst on record ! And don’t play the old whole of MDB dogshit eh? You know very well the discussed mechanisms and regions under discussion. Murray headwaters and SEQ were WORST on record. And climate change or natural variability – long term droughts near major population centres tend to be a concern. If you ran out of water they’d lynch you.
You’ll note Toowoomba dams still not overflowing or near full and they’re still pumping Wivenhoe water. No rainfall = no runoff = no dam water. Building unpopular (get you kicked out of office) dams don’t make it rain.
And interestingly it’s national party voting landholders forming short-term alliances with greens who block dams. It’s called political expedience and Not In My Backyard Syndrome. Wake up eh?
For Malcolm’s edification
Figure 15 page 25 http://www.climatechange.qld.gov.au/pdf/climate-change-in-queensland-2010.pdf
Note Figure 1 http://www.seaci.org/publications/documents/SEACI-1%20Reports/Phase1_SynthesisReport.pdf and Figure 2
‘…dams don’t make it rain’. No, but if we were prepared for a deluge we would have built the dams instead of costly desal plants.
Just reinforcing my contention that a back to back Nina is in the offing.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/monitoring/poama.nino34.gif
And you see el Gordo – if it didn’t rain – you’d be saying why didn’t we build nuclear powered de-sal plants
Isn’t hindsight so wonderful …. you can’t be wrong. If it had not rained we would not have heard a squeak.
It’s not all de-sal as Malcolm would have us believe – we now have a water grid that can move water around SEQ to where it’s needed. We do have a recycling plant. However the Tugun desal plant seems poorly constructed – typical private enterprise job. So for a burgeoning population that will see more El Nino events and burgeoning population growth is it money that poorly spent?
el Gordo – aren’t BoM’s forecasts crap (the title of this thread). POAMA – pfft ! Frankly I don’t believe we can forecast through the Austral autumn predictability barrier…. (IMO of course) – do we have anything other than the historical record to give us the probabilities? I’m betting neutral !
Some govt propaganda
The Tugun desalination plant is delivering South East Queensland residents with vital clean drinking water after unprecedented rainfalls have resulted in poor water quality in the Brisbane River.
The desalination facility was brought up to full capacity on Wednesday after heavy rainfall over the Lockyer Valley and Bremer catchments resulted in large amounts of sediment in floodwaters flowing down the Brisbane River.
http://www.cabinet.qld.gov.au/mms/StatementDisplaySingle.aspx?id=73152
According to Stewart Franks ‘La Nina events are primary drivers of flood risk and 100 year flood by traditional analysis occurs every 15 years of IPO negative.’
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/weather/Franks2007.pdf
Let’s see more of this ‘traditional analysis’, it beats the pants off those poorly programmed models.
Neutral looks a fair bet, but only for a few months before a weak Nina comes into play. Similar to the mid-1950s.
For Lukes edification
1. “Flannery is an advisor on climate change to South Australian Premier Mike Rann, and is a member of the Queensland Climate Change Council established by the Queensland Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation Andrew McNamara”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Flannery
2. Flannery’s predictions on tape..just one of a number of sources
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/out_of_context_flannery_explains_his_dud_predictions/P40/
3. http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi?graph=rain&area=aus&season=0112&ave_yr=T
Showing long term trend for the whole of the MDB for the last 100 or so years.
Happy New Year
Malcolm – yawn – it’s “a viewpoint” among many many. You really have no idea. Are you saying that Flannery alone determines govt policy. Do tell ….
El Gordo – yawn again – well known for at least 10 years. The models are “poorly programmed” are they – you’ve inspected the code?
And why Malcolm would you quote a whole Australian or even MDB time series in a large continent with major spatial trends. You wonder why scientists roll their eyes.
The so called scientists can roll their eyes anyway they like… the point of quoting the MDB was precisely because it was important in the water shortage/usage and more dams debate.
..and because you hadnt noticed….as is usually the case… the MDB isnt the whole of Australia…nor had I made mention of the whole of Australia.
But I hope for their sake and the countries, that their reading and comprehension skills are better than the standard you have demonstrated.
Of course Flannery was but one view point… but it was a very influential one from the warmanistas side. The ABC and Labor Govt officials were all over him…why else would they appoint him to all the committees handling the issues involved.
The models can’t predict ENSO six months ahead, that’s why I’m having a crack at it.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/aggie-joke-dessler-claims-that-climate-models-can-forecast-enso/
Dessler was talking through his hat.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/12/30/lawrence-solomon-75-climate-scientists-think-humans-contribute-to-global-warming/#ixzz19g02SUhj
Whilst we are about it, here is yet more reporting/analysis that questions the ethical integrity of the IPCC and its grossly overhyped status.
So it turns out that the frequent claim that the consensus of 2500 scientists isnt really that at all…its more lilkely no more than 75.
Why isnt that fraudulent misrepresentation.?
“The models can’t predict ENSO six months ahead, that’s why I’m having a crack at it.”
Does that mean “Guess” based on some strong personal feelings?
This is not a guess, more a pinch of intuition combined with a dash of deduction. The unusually cold subsurface temperature in the central east Pacific is the key.
The guesses are left to the ” eye rollers”…they know how to dress the guesses up.
This is a standout and supports my argument.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images3/nino34SSTMonE120.gif
Bastardi and Corbyn discuss supercomputers and their relevance in forecasting.
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/01/02/bastardi-and-corbyn-reply/
The whole NH is now in the grip of unusually cold conditions and its not what the models forecast for a warmer world. This CAGW theory has had its day.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/01/crises-in-east.html
You shouldn’t encourage Steve Goddard. He immediately misinterprets Dessler’s quote-apparently “simulate”=”forecast” in his lexicon,then refuses to actually go through the weekly La Nina/El Nino advisories from NOAA CPC. He seems to forget that ENSO indices on a monthly basis are very volatile,and they spend quite a lot of time in the neutral state. He has picked one forecast to make his “point”.
If he did go through the weekly outlooks,his simplistic claims would be exposed. The criteria for positive or negative is quite stringent,depending on the accumulation of overlapping three-monthly blocks.,and the neutral range is within plus or minus 0.5C around the Nino3.4 mean,or within plus or minus 8 on the SOI. Goddard ignores all this. The models project developments quite well, and Goddard is yet to actually analyse anything.
“simulate”=”forecast”
‘If you can’t predict ENSO, you obviously can’t predict the climate.’ A good sub would have changed it to read: If you can’t simulate ENSO, you obviously can’t predict the climate.
Do you seriously think anyone has ‘dealt’ with a subject like ENSO modelling by using a one-line dismissal? Goddard can dish out the rubbish because he has no responsibility to be dispassionate or accurate or useful…that’s my issue with him: he is without constructive purpose,beyond entertaining a few fellow-travellers.
Simulation of ENSO is pretty good,if you bother reading the reams of forecasts,and work over the decades on ENSO effects,and ENSO reconstruction.
Maybe you’d like to flesh out why difficulties with the exact timing of crossing ENSO index threshholds makes climate unpredictable over a century.
More nonsense El Gordo – ENSO is a wiggle on the long term climate. Nobody is saying one can predict the weather on July 7 2039 or seasonal climatic conditions in spring 2039 …. for heavens sake.
It’s the old initial conditions vs boundary conditions ruse argument.
The only reason we have ENSO forecasts of sorts is that the ENSO or anti-ENSO pattern phase locks in winter for spring and summer. The ocean-atmosphere machinery once started, displays persistent and evolving behaviour.
As for your NOAA link – what’s the skill level of that forecast? mathematically
‘What’s the skill level of that forecast? mathematically.’
Not sure, but I could probably get 10/1 with a bookie.
Before this thread drifts into the archive I will leave a link with a question for Luke. What is the ‘as yet undetermined multidecadal forcing phenomena that operates in the SE Pacific sector of the southern ocean.’?
http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2002/2000PA000602.shtml