Mystic Met Office predicts neighbourhood Thermageddon

Inspired by Douglas Adams again, no doubt.

Ain't it strange how, when their predicted doom'n'gloom failed to show, the Green Lobby instantly announced that it was reality that got it wrong since their calculations must be right, cos they said so.

If I were as vindictive as soon of those loons I have had the misfortune to know, I would suggest that if they are so sure it's Real Life that got it wrong, maybe it should be confiscated from them...

Meh

"They are claiming that they can predict what will happen in individual regions of the country - down to a 25km square. You can enter your postcode and find out how your street will be affected by global warming in 2040 or 2080."

It's not exactly complicated to interpolate between areas, not matter what the original resolution. It might not be particularly accurate on a tiny scale from large areas, but it is certainly better than leaving the general public to guess a value from the original data and nearby values (like I have to do for my weather forecast). I don't imagine that there are huge differences between adjacent areas anyway. Plus you can cross reference with more accurate local data with the height above sea level, river level, etc, to work out new values without having to increase your margin of error on the results. It's not rocket science, don't make it out to be so wildly inaccurate (not that I'm claiming that the results of the model are accurate in any way).

Met Office Predictions? Bah!

The Met Office can't tell you the current weather, let alone predict global flood and famine in decades to come. Ask anyone in the know, meteorologically speaking, and they'll tell you that the Met Office's modelling is completely naff. Mate of mine who lives in Mallorca called me a few weeks back to say that the Met Office forecast on the BBC had it that the Spanish isle was cold, wet, windy and generally unpleasant. The sky was blue, temperature was in the mid-20s Celsius, he told me.

Similarly, the weather here on the South Coast of the UK at the time was supposedly dull and cloudy with a risk of showers. You'll not be surprised to know that the weather was warm, sunny and - as I took the call whilst sitting out in the garden, glugging back my share of a pot of Java - pleasantly uncloudy.

When they can get the day's forecast sorted out with some kind of accuracy, I'll start to listen to their warnings.

"No, madam; there isn't a hurricane on the way."

Met Office refuses to provide data

from http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6346

Phil Jones: the Secret Agent in Hawaii

by Steve McIntyre on June 21st, 2009

As CA readers know, Phil Jones keeps his CRU data secret. Embarrassingly, the UK Met Office relies on this secret data and says that it is unable to provide this supporting data for the most relied upon temperature data set in the world. Their statements in response to FOI requests as to what they actually hold seem contradictory, but most recently they state that they do not hold original data, but only the "value added version" provided to them by Phil Jones. Whether they are entitled to keep the "value added version" secret is something that their FOI officer is presently considering.

Recently, Anthony Watts discovered that the Honolulu Observatory data, which NOAA and NASA lost track of in the 1980s, continued to the present day.

Anthony observed the substantial difference between trends at Honolulu airport and at more rural sites.

When I've done previous benchmarking of GISS data, I've usually tried to use relatively isolated stations so that the effect of data inclusions and exclusions could be simplified. Since Hawaii is relatively isolated, it seemed like it would be an interesting exercise to look at the Hawaiian gridcell, to get a preview of whether the "discovery" of a long data set might have an impact at the gridded level.

As so often, when one goes down a climate science rabbit hole, wonderland awaits. More »

1000x bigger than what?

1000x bigger than your or my PC?

I think we can manage that now.

1000x bigger than the biggerst super computer?

A bit more difficult.

But if the software *already* exists (in principal) how about custom hardware?

The EFF did a DES cracker system to prove DES could be cracked in a week at most (3 1/2 days) on average for less than $200k.

So with the structure of the software decided could a special purpose machine runt the job a *lot* faster?

A single chip won't hit more than a few 100 MHz, and a few million gates. So you'd probably need a lot of them, but they would be relatively cheap.

Just a thought.

Slightly off topic

but as interesting as it gets in the US ....

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/24/the-epa-suppresses-dissent-and-opinion-and-apparently-decides-issues-in-advance-of-public-comment/

or (tiny url) http://tinyurl.com/lwa72u

(EPA) "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision…"

"I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change.”

Done deal indeed.

Oh really...

Of course, this is the same people whom manage to predict the weather so accurately on a daily basis and now we can get postcode specific climate data??? 30 years in the future?!?!?!

Christ on an AT-AT, they cant predict what its doing from one sodding day to the next...

@Dave Colborne, Charles Manning et al

Thanks for those balanced, insightful, scientific contributions. I'm sure we've all benefited.

Now how much scatter are we talking?

Materials properties for alloys have been know to vary 25% (on a standard alloy composition). That's a failry well controlled environment where most of the variables affecting the outcome are known.

Never mind how big the model would have to be. Do we actually have *all* the relevant parameters known. I'm thinking how long climatologists dismissed solar activity levels as irrelevant (Hint. without the Sun this planet's atmosphere becomes a liquid layer roughly 1m thick and daily living become quite difficult).

And then we have the resolution. on a 2Deg resolution model would any UK city be big enough to register?

And bumps above the surface, or mountains. How much air flow can they possibly change?

So at what point do the probability ranges smear out so much they are virtually at the background (completely random) level?

@Chief sub

A good point about sloppy language indicating sloppy thinking. The one that really gets to me is 'the environment'. The term is not capable of being used in this way. There are a vast, if not infinite, number of environments depending on what entity you are refering to, but there is no single environment.

Watermelon

Hilary Benn, another watermelon, another red painting himself in green. Like the Milliband brothers he grew up under a raving Marxist father except in Hilary's case it was Saddam's friend Tony 'Stop The War' Benn. It's no surprise to see so much nepotism at play among these socially concerned socialists. That's all a Red does - grab power then share power with friends and relatives.

On Friday last...

... week the Met Office forecast heavy rain for our area. We had almost wall to wall sun and a few fluffy white clouds.

This is their level of accuracy for less than 24 hours ahead ..... so just what is the level of uncertainty for 10, 20, 50 years from now ?