Helpful for contingency planning or not?

[marchesarosa]

"Met Office 3-month outlook"

"Period: April 2013 - June 2013 Issue date: 21 March 2013"

SUMMARY - TEMPERATURE:

"For April below-average UK-mean temperatures are more likely than above-average. For April-May-June as a whole above-average temperatures are weakly favoured. However, there is still a significant chance that this period will be colder than it was in the majority of the last 10 years.

The probability that the UK-mean temperature for April-May-June will be in the coldest of our five categories is around 15% and the probability that it will be in the warmest category is around 20% (the probability for each of these categories is 20%)."

www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/s/2/A3-plots-temp-AMJ.pdf

SUMMARY - PRECIPITATION:

For both April and April-May-June as a whole the uncertainty is large, leaving the forecast largely indistinguishable from climatology.
The probability that UK precipitation will fall into the driest of our five categories is around 20% and the probability that it will fall into the wettest category is also around 20% (the probability for each of these categories is 20%).

www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/s/r/A3-plots-precip-AMJ.pdf

"Contingency planners"

www.metoffice.gov.uk/publicsector/contingency-planners

[marchesarosa]

Simon W remarks:

Even if a historical analysis showed that the odds really were 20,20,20,20,20 then the forecasts would still be of no use at all. It would just indicate that forecasting is a waste of time in this scenario.

For a useful display of skill I would expect to see forecast spreads like 15, 65, 15, 4, 1 AND for this to match within reason what actually happens over time. Without that sort of level of skill, as I have said before, it is just (very expensive) "astrology for intellectuals".

[marchesarosa]

David adds:

What is it they call their £60m super-computer - Deep Black..?
Should be called Deep..... oh, I see you're way ahead of me...

[marchesarosa]

State of Ohio sues Punxsutawney Phil







Could Phil be LESS accurate than the Met Office?

[marchesarosa]

Someone got it right, though!

Joe Bastardi: “Models Portraying Severe Winter” For Europe. North America Forecast For Brutal Cold
By P Gosselin on 7. January 2013

...Of course 30-day general forecasts are nothing certain, and things could develop differently. But should anything like this indeed develop, then look at the cold headed for Germany, Eastern and Central Europe. I really do hope they have every source of electricity generation ready on standby because they are going to need it.

Germany’s leaders, in my view, have been playing an irresponsible game of Russian Roulette with its citizens when it comes the nation’s power grid and supply, winging it and praying they’ll somehow eek by another winter. This winter they may not be so lucky. I can see the headlines already.

Enjoy the last few remaining days of mild weather. After that, hope that the Beast from the East shows a little compassion. Unfortunately, Mother Nature rarely does so.

notrickszone.com/2013/01/07/joe-bastardi-models-portraying-severe-winter-for-europe-north-america-forecast-for-brutal-cold/

[marchesarosa]

Barry W says:

This charge is just harassment by the spring denialists who are funded by the Big Winter Sports and Snow Shovel Makers. Multiple GCM’s (Groundhog Climate Models) show that spring has arrived and the cold and snow are just “weather” and a localized phenomena, much as the MWP (Midwestern Warm Period) was earlier in the year.

[marchesarosa]

Michael Harts says,

It’s Punxsutawney-gate!
There’s a job waiting for Phil in the UK at UEA Climate Research Unit.
If he needs an enquiry to clear him of all misrepresentations, that can be arranged too.

[principled]

Hmm
So let me get this straight:

For April-May-June as a whole above-average temperatures are weakly favoured. However, there is still a significant chance that this period will be colder than it was in the majority of the last 10 years.

So I can safely hang up my long trousers and put on my shorts...over my thermal long johns. Great.

The probability that UK precipitation will fall into the driest of our five categories is around 20% and the probability that it will fall into the wettest category is also around 20% (the probability for each of these categories is 20%).

So I should be planning to water my garden, whilst holding my umbrella. Got it.

So if whilst driving you happen to see a guy in shorts with long johns underneath holding an umbrella and watering his garden while it rains you'll know he is an avid support of the Met's forecasts!
P

[alancalverd]

Here are my predictions, using international aviation weather codes

PROB100 Sunset + until 21/6 then -

PROB80 Mean mthly temp + until some time in July or August, then -

NOTE The opposite will happen in the southern hemisphere.

PROB80 NOSIG VAR at the equator.

PROB100 OCNL RAIN usually during a cricket match, anywhere.

NOTE these predictions do not imply that any one particular day will be sunny, cloudy, hot or cold.

PROB100 At least one day somewhere will be the somethingest since last time, or possibly on record, which will send the meeja into a frenzy of doomladen speculation just as Her Majesty's Government PROB90 perpetrates a massive swindle, PROB80 privatises the Crown Jewels, or PROB60 starts an unnecessary war, which will barely make Page 4.

PROB90 Someone will make a huge amount of money by suggesting, with no proof or explanation, that it is all due to anthropogenic carbon dioxide and you should pay more taxes.

PROB100 Anyone who disagrees will be castigated and excommunicated.

[buckleymanor1]

PROB100 At least one day somewhere will be the somethingest since last time, or possibly on record, which will send the meeja into a frenzy of doomladen speculation just as Her Majesty's Government PROB90 perpetrates a massive swindle, PROB80 privatises the Crown Jewels, or PROB60 starts an unnecessary war, which will barely make Page 4.

Saturday saw the coldest recorded Easter temperature of -10.9C at Braemar, Aberdeenshire, The Sun reports.

One prediction down, I will have to get a copy to check out page 4

[marchesarosa]

But easter is the original moveable feast so doesn't count for comparison purposes.

"Easter falls on the first Sunday, following the first full moon after 21 March (the vernal equinox). But not always.
...Easter can be on 22 March, as it was in 1761 and 1818, but that won't happen until 2285. Its latest possible date is 25 April but we haven't had that since 1943 and won't again until 2038. The commonest date is 19 April though the full cycle of Easter dates only repeats after 5,700,000 years."
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-big-question-how-is-the-date-of-easter-determined-and-why-is-it-so-early-this-year-798980.html

Now you know.

[buckleymanor1]

I love it, never knowing for sure which day you will get your Easter egg surprise.

[Mr Red]

actually it is the Vernal Equnox that is the arbiter. Not 21st March. However the Vernal Equinox can be the wrong side of midnight occasionally. And with the Earth's wobble and the ovality variations of it trajectory - who knows?

[fascinating]

I have read that the determination of when the day and night become equal length can be distorted by such things as atmospheric refraction of sunlight, as well as the wobbles and changes.

There is probably no single date, at any position on the Earth's surface, when the day and night are exactly the same length. At Newcastle, the daylength on the 17th was 11hr 58m, and the next day it was 12hr 2m, so which day would be named as the vernal equinox?

[mrsonde]

Mar 20, 2017 13:47:35 GMT 1 fascinating said:

I have read that the determination of when the day and night become equal length can be distorted by such things as atmospheric refraction of sunlight, as well as the wobbles and changes.

There is probably no single date, at any position on the Earth's surface, when the day and night are exactly the same length. At Newcastle, the daylength on the 17th was 11hr 58m, and the next day it was 12hr 2m, so which day would be named as the vernal equinox?

The vernal equinox is not determined by when the day and night become of equal length. That's called the equilux. The equinoces are the points at which the equatorial plane passes through the centre of the sun, so that the rotational sense of the Earth shifts polarity - in the Spring, the point when the Sun moves from Pisces to Aries. The important aspect about it is not the sunlight, but the relative polarities of the two bodies' magnetic fields (vis-a-vis that rotational sense, as in a dynamo). You can detect this shift with microsecond precision with even a fairly basic geomagnetic field meter - you can even listen to it happening, for two or three minutes, with the right audio equipment. As we're in the first year of the Leap Year cycle, this was on the 20th this year - about twenty past ten in the morning.