"The Met Office is a truly world-class organisation - we are lucky to have it,"

I think that the public's grasp of stats is so low that they can't really grasp the lack of certainty.

The forecasts up to five days are getting so much more accurate now, I wonder why they bother trying to guess what's going to happen six months on.

Its the long term forecasts that make the money. There is a huge demand for 1 - 6 month forecasts from industry.

Agreed.

The trouble is that by the Met office's own admission their regional 48 hour advanced forecast is accurate 6 days out of 7.
If you extend this forecast to 14 days then it is below 50% accuracy (i.e. little better than a guess).
As part of my job I am sent a 14 day advanced forecast every Monday and the predicted accuracy for the second week is always low because of this.

Andrew Neil recently asked some similar questions on the BBC as well.

Clicky.

For 9 out of the past 10 years they've predicted that annual temperatures would be higher than they actually have been.

I find it difficult to rely on forecasts of any type that are based on statistics that are only correct 10% of the time.

This "warming bias" is very small - just 0.05C. And the Met Office points out that the variance between the forecast and the actual temperature is within its own stated margins of error.

So the predictions have been to within the stated margin of error, and to my mind 0.05C really is a small amount. You're hardly going to say:

"I was going out today, but it's only 18.95C. Those damned fools told me it would be 19C, and I was totally relying on it".

Huh? I'm actually quite impressed by the accuracy:



So the predictions have been to within the stated margin of error, and to my mind 0.05C really is a small amount. You're hardly going to say:

"I was going out today, but it's only 18.95C. Those damned fools told me it would be 19C, and I was totally relying on it".

I have a beef with the BBC's weather forecasters (who are Met Office employees, I believe). The past two or three years have seen a move to style over substance,

with little in the way of actual forecasting going on. The BBC's current map system is obscure and full of fancy-schmancy graphic nonsense which tells me nothing about what the weather will be. I much preferred the old fashioned pictograms. You could tell a rain cloud from a snow cloud because it had a little drop under it. Now it's all shades of blue and brown, with white highlights. It's a mess, but you can complain till you're blue in the face and no-one listens...

Leaving that aside, when predictions of a "barbecue summer" and a "warmer winter" turn out to be polar opposites of what actually happens, you have to wonder what the Met Office is actually trying to achieve. The forecasts up to five days are getting so much more accurate now, I wonder why they bother trying to guess what's going to happen six months on.