Scottish weather forecasting
 

In July 2001 the Met Office opened a new "Centre of Excellence" in
Aberdeen, primarily to provide marine forecasts but it also provides
forecasts for mountain use, winter road conditions and aviation use.

By all accounts I've seen the centre has been successful, both
commercially and in terms of its quality of service. Being a modern
weather forecasting service it is heavily reliant on computing power,
but as we know, computer forecasts don't have it all worked out yet and
a degree of local, specialist knowledge helps in giving a good forecast
on top of what the computer models can do.

So I've been rather dismayed to hear that the Met Office are proposing
to close down the Aberdeen office and move its operations to their main
base in Exeter, putting all their eggs in the supercomputing basket.
Local Weather For Local People? Not any more if the Met Office have
their way.

The closure is subject to consultation, and to try and sway this
consultation an e-petition is in place at:

http://www.petitiononline.com/SCOTMET/petition.html

If you share my view that this closure is a potentially Very Bad Idea,
please take the time to sign it.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

Nice one Pete. Delighted to add my name.
Do they know what Munros are in Exeter? :-)

--
Remove my boots to email me ...
Regards
Andy
"Peter Clinch" wrote in message
...
In July 2001 the Met Office opened a new "Centre of Excellence" in
Aberdeen, primarily to provide marine forecasts but it also provides
forecasts for mountain use, winter road conditions and aviation use.

By all accounts I've seen the centre has been successful, both
commercially and in terms of its quality of service. Being a modern
weather forecasting service it is heavily reliant on computing power, but
as we know, computer forecasts don't have it all worked out yet and a
degree of local, specialist knowledge helps in giving a good forecast on
top of what the computer models can do.

So I've been rather dismayed to hear that the Met Office are proposing to
close down the Aberdeen office and move its operations to their main base
in Exeter, putting all their eggs in the supercomputing basket. Local
Weather For Local People? Not any more if the Met Office have their way.

The closure is subject to consultation, and to try and sway this
consultation an e-petition is in place at:

http://www.petitiononline.com/SCOTMET/petition.html

If you share my view that this closure is a potentially Very Bad Idea,
please take the time to sign it.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

Andy Crawford wrote:
Nice one Pete. Delighted to add my name.
Do they know what Munros are in Exeter? :-)

Just small bits of the Matrix... which they are, at some level, but
until the Met Office's supercomputers can lay in perfect forecasts
they're a little more than that, too.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

Peter Clinch writes:

Andy Crawford wrote:
Nice one Pete. Delighted to add my name.
Do they know what Munros are in Exeter? :-)

Just small bits of the Matrix... which they are, at some level, but
until the Met Office's supercomputers can lay in perfect forecasts
they're a little more than that, too.

I suppose that if you use the average height in each gridpoint that
Scotland is actually fairly flat :-)

Roos

I hope this does not compromise Radio Scotlands excellent Outdoors
Conditions Forecast. At the moment I would say it is as important as Geoff
Monks mwis in picking out my hill days! I often await this forecast before
getting my stuff togehter for a quick blast up north!

Compared to a decade ago we are absolutely spoilt with quality weather
information such as the two mentioned above along with the forecasting
models such as Wetterkarte GFS and Americas NOGAPS

No excuses for a duff day in the hills now, I haven't had one since Oct last
year, and I've probably knocked off about 70 munros since then! Don't quite
no what went wrong that day, every forecast showed near excellent
conditions, ended up navigating my way round the 3 hills just above
newtonmoor, what a waste of a day out!

Pity the beeb seem to be trying to emulate that awful met check computer
generated meaningless garbage that is about as much use as a candle in a jam
jar!

"Peter Clinch" wrote in message
...
Andy Crawford wrote:
Nice one Pete. Delighted to add my name.
Do they know what Munros are in Exeter? :-)

Just small bits of the Matrix... which they are, at some level, but
until the Met Office's supercomputers can lay in perfect forecasts
they're a little more than that, too.

To be honest, from what my Dad heard when he took a trip round the Met
Office recently, wherever they are, they can only predict with any degree of
certainty upto three days ahead. Anything beyond that is purely
theoretical, based on Computer sims and about as reliable as crows flying
and cows lying down.

Rob

On 6/7/05 09:45, in article , "Peter Clinch"
wrote:

Local Weather For Local People? Not any more if the Met Office have
their way.

Well, as much as I sympathise, I don't think it necessarily follows that you
have to be in Aberdeen to forecast the weather in the Cairngorms, in today's
age of satellites.

Unless of course all the staff in the Met Office's Centre Of Excellence were
employed to look out the window and see if the cows were lying down or not.
I accept that being local would be advantagious in that scenario.

Al

Al Downie wrote:

Unless of course all the staff in the Met Office's Centre Of Excellence
were employed to look out the window and see if the cows were lying down
or not. I accept that being local would be advantagious in that scenario.

They could probably do that with a webcam, but there's no substitute for
being there in person to see if the seaweed is damp or not. :)

Al Downie wrote:

Well, as much as I sympathise, I don't think it necessarily follows that you
have to be in Aberdeen to forecast the weather in the Cairngorms, in today's
age of satellites.

Indeed not, but it might help if you frequently look at the Cairngorm
information in person based on a personal knowledge of the weather in
the area. Which you're less likely to have if you're A Random Met
Office Employee based in Exeter rather than someone living in the broad
overall area with specific responsibility to forecast for it.

There's more to it than just looking at pictures, or indeed out of the
window.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

Radio Scotland is fine when you don't have access to a computer but
their service isn't that reliable firstly because they change the
timings to suit any programme change or it is on FM and not MW or vice
versa. Try finding a forecast on Sunday evening there is none.

I also suspect that the morning forecast on Saturday and Sunday is a
repeat of what they say the evening before. I say that because one
evening I listened to the forecast and they made an error. The same
error was repeated in the morning forecast so they are just reading
from a script which they are not updating regularly. I think they
would rather we paid for this service. Not much change when there are
free sites on the internet like Geoff Monks.

I would say that on average the forecast is 50% correct which obviously
means that they are wrong 50% of the time although never counted.

Lindsay
www.caledoniahilltreks.com