UK Met Office says could have predicted snows with new computer, key global warming journal Nature says last 3 years of cold, snow just 'freak'

With trillions at stake including organized crime, "Nature" says this is a 'freak', UK Met Office says could have been called if only they'd had another multi-million dollar computer. Yet taxpayer funded Met Office has a new supercomputer installed in August 2009 valued at $UK30 million. The article does not mention failed 'barbecue summer' predictions.

12/30/10, "Freak weather could have been predicted, " Nature, by Nicola Jones

"UK Met Office is being held back by a lack of computing power, says its chief scientist Julia Slingo....

Is the UK Met Office playing catch-up with its US counterpart?

Certainly they were ahead of us on space weather. But generally I think we're pretty similar, really. In the United Kingdom we have climate and weather in the same building,

• using the same models.
  

That's incredibly powerful and something the United States doesn't have.

What's the biggest obstacle to creating better, hazard-relevant weather forecasts?

Access to supercomputers. The science is well ahead of our ability to implement it. It's quite clear that if we could run our models at a higher resolution we could do a much better job — tomorrow — in terms of our seasonal and decadal predictions.

• It's so frustrating.
  

• We keep saying we need four times the computing power.
  

We're talking just 10 or 20 million a year — dollars or pounds —

• which is tiny compared to the damage done by disasters.
  

Yet it's a difficult argument to win. You just think:

• why is this so hard?

Would that really make a practical difference to forecasts?

Yes....Instead of talking about seasonal means, we ought to be saying "There's an x% probability of a heat wave of this magnitude lasting this amount of time." That's more useful. You could use that to mobilize food aid or fire-fighting equipment.

The UK has had big snowstorms both this year and last. Will this kind of weather be more common in future?

We don't know. That's exactly the sort of thing

• we need more computing power for.

We probably have the models. We'll launch a project in the next few months to look at this question.

What's next for the Met Office?

...I was out at the US Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, last week to form a collaboration with their climate research centre, to bring together their Earth-observation expertise with our modelling expertise. And we're in the process of establishing

• a serious climate service,

in the same way as the United States. We've actually been doing this for years without calling it climate services,

• but it's clear
  
• we now need a quite focused activity, with a person in place
  
• to lead it."

Reference: 1/3/2010, "It has a gigantic supercomputer, 1500 staff, and a $UK170 million budget. So why does the Met Office get it so wrong?" Daily Mail UK, by Richard North

"Spinning a coin could have given the same result - not one you would expect from an organisation that spends nearly £170million a year, has 1,500 staff and a team of scientists operating a £30million supercomputer capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second, with a carbon footprint the size of a small town.

Yet even with this brand-new computer in action since last August, on December 10 the Met Office predicted that it was 'more likely than not that 2010 will be the warmest year in the instrumental record, beating the previous record year which was 1998'. That prediction stands unchanged."...

Aug. 4, 2008, UK Met Office website:

"John Hirst, Met Office Chief Executive said: "In a world where the effect of extreme weather events is becoming more severe and the potential impact of global warming isbecoming ever more apparent, the Met Office plays an increasingly vital role in researching and forecasting these events. The new supercomputer is an important step in delivering our strategic targets."...Defence Minister, Derek Twigg MP, said: "The Met Office provides essential services to the nation, saving lives and protecting property through its weather forecasts and climate advice. I am very pleased to approve the replacement of the Met Office's supercomputer, which will enable it to take advantage of latest technology and thereby deliver enhanced services to the public and both Government and commercial customers." "IBM to provide next Met Office supercomputer"

12/23/10, "There has been snow in the UK every January-February for the last 3 years."

12/22/10, "It was argued that cold winters in the UK were a thing of the past. Then 2008/09 was a cold one, 2009/10 was even colder and now 2010 is breaking records. "...(Observational records).

• Catastrophic weather and climate predictions by UK climate scientists and politicians (often in cooperation with the UN) have been used for years to extract money from American citizens. That is a crime. Climate science is not now and has never been such that enslavement of American citizens has been warranted by it. ed.

P.S. 5/6/10, Macmillan Publishing (parent of journal 'Nature') admitted to making bribery payments, though not in connection with Nature. BBC

via Tom Nelson